


Ain't Enough Hours (In My Day)

by operationhades



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Also a creepy hallway, And Meat Freezers/Fridges, BAMF Sheriff Stilinski, BAMF Stiles Stilinski, Boys Kissing, Canon-Typical Violence, Hand Jobs, Hurt!Stiles, I don't even know what to put here anymore, Kidnapping, M/M, Were!Sheriff, Werewolf!Sheriff, Wordcount: 30.000-50.000, alpha pack, no joke
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-13
Updated: 2012-11-27
Packaged: 2017-11-16 05:55:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 43,390
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/536224
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/operationhades/pseuds/operationhades
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I'm going to kill you Derek,” Stiles hissed instead, staring down at the bite mark on his dad's shoulder. “I'm going to murder you, castrate you, put you to sleep, even!” Or, the one where the Sheriff gets attacked by the alpha's, gets bitten by Derek, and consequently finally finds out about 'the whole truth'. And Stiles is freaking pissed and secretly afraid like fuck, because hey, who isn't a little bit damaged here? STEREK, because apparently I now write Teen Wolf.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Unbeta'd! Couldn't find a beta, so I just gave up. Also, this was never supposed to pass 8K, or develop plot. It was just supposed to be Stilinski feels. No joke. Livejournal also sucks. Screw you character limit. I refuse to let you win. Title shamelessly borrowed from Fly Over by Asian Dub Foundation.
> 
> P.S. Being the Sheriff's son, I'm guessing Stiles wouldn't have _Derek Hale's_ name on his phone. That's just stupid. As for Erica, that's just Stiles. (pfft.)
> 
> P.P.S. Major thanks to [sheepnamedpig](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Sheepnamedpig/pseuds/Sheepnamedpig) for corrections to this chapter! Everything else is allegedly my fault. Allegedly.

Stiles liked to think he had a few plans for when the inevitable unveiling of _everything_ happened to the adults in their life. Scott's mom, his dad, maybe even Danny, because hey, Danny was pretty mature for a teenager (or maybe Stiles just thought he was because the dude wasn't having a gay crisis like he thought every gay teenager did, for one), but never in his life did he think he'd be tearing out of class (chemistry class, because every time something happened it always seemed to be in chemistry) with Scott right behind him, mind going a mile a minute as it bombarded him with every possible scenario on the text he'd just gotten from Erica.

> _From: femme fatale  
>  'Get 2 Dereks, ur dad was attacked.'_

The Jeep was in front of him, his keys were in his hand, biting into the skin of his palm, and the first words out of his mouth as he jabbed it in and turned the ignition off were, "I'm going to kill him."

"Stiles," said Scott, looking suitably freaked out as the Jeep lurched forward with too much enthusiasm and almost collided into Jackson's porsche parked in front of it. Why couldn't the jackass park anywhere else? Why was it always so goddamn close to his Jeep, anyway? Why was the asshole even still _alive,_ thank you very much? "Dude, you're kinda creeping me out here."

The horn blared as Stiles slammed it with a palm, manoeuvring out of the school's parking lot and onto the main street as he sarcastically laughed. "Me? Creeping you out? Why ever would I do that?" Maybe he'd said his thoughts about Jackson out loud, and okay, fine, maybe the pack had suddenly decided to act like one big happy family and Jackson wasn't as much as a dick as before now with his wolf hulk outs and no longer being a murderous tool of snake-ish wrath. Stiles didn't like Jackson – he never did – and for the record, the amount of dislike for the dick was so humongous it literally didn't have space in it to include the failure that was his epic-crush on Lydia.

"Y-You smell weird."

Why was Derek's house so freaking far again? Why did the unsociable, stalkerish, Edward Cullen wolf counterpart, and overall frowny face live in a dilapidated building that was more likely to kill them all than the apparent alpha pack roaming around here? He was going to kill Derek, and every other goddamn piece of–

"Dude! Too fast!" Scott yelled, fingers gripping the dashboard as he rudely wrenched Stiles out of his thoughts. "You smell like a storm!"

That was weird enough to actually grab Stiles' attention, making him glance at Scott for a moment before turning back to the road (he _was_ driving a bit over the limit, and he really didn't want to die so eyes on the road, bucko), finally driving off it into the battered trail that led to the Hale house. "Like thunder and lightning and rain and stuff?" He curiously asked, still finding the idea of scenting emotions bizarre and totally fucking awesome.

"More like thunder and lightning and a _hurricane_ and stuff," came the reply, and Stiles theorised Scott was exaggerating, because Scott liked to exaggerate, like, a lot. "I don't know what the hell you're thinking, but you're scaring the crap out of me."

Huh, so he could scare even big bad werewolves. Good, because he needed everything he could get to kill Derek Hale. Because of course all of this was Derek fucking Hale's fault – everything – from Scott being bitten to the alpha going batshit crazy (and Peter was still batshit crazy, just not an alpha, hahahaha) to Jackson going Alien vs Predator on them all, Lydia having a mental breakdown and Allison becoming some sort of bizarre hunter/spy/who knows what the hell she actually is besides Scott's obsession. All of it was Derek's fault. Hell, even Stiles getting his ass beaten by an old freaking man was Derek's fault.

Except it was sorta Stiles that had dragged Scott out into the woods that night in the first place.

But fate was a tricky bitch. She'd have gotten to Scott there sooner or later, anyway. Better with Stiles around, right? Right.

The Jeep began struggling, bouncing it's occupants around as the trail got thicker due to coming from the wrong side, abandoned for the more maintained driveway Stiles usually used, and in the horizon the Hale house could be seen growing bigger by the minute like some bad horror movie as the Jeep moved further ahead at a crawls pace. Growing more and more frustrated by the minute as the house didn't come close fast enough (why did he take the wrong turn? Why?), Stiles finally killed off the engine and threw himself out of the car, slamming the door behind him with his foot rather than his hand. It might've been a kick, it might've been just a friendly pat on his baby's exterior. Needless to say, he was angry again.

Oh so angry.

"Scott," he began, a warning note in his voice as he psyched himself up, pacing back and forth by his side of the car before setting out towards the house. "If my dad is more hurt than just a little bump to the head, I'm going to go break into Allison's garage where you and her say there's a ton of weapons and steal them and then go _use them_." Which was a great idea, shit that was an actually good plan. In fact, he might enlist the help of the Argent's now that old man Gerard was (hopefully) out for the count and become a bad ass hunter himself and hunt down those alpha pieces of shit and take them down then just hurt Derek a bit. Just a little bit. Enough to get his point across.

Yeah, that totally seemed like a plausible plan. Make that plan #47. Before the one with Allison's bow and arrows and below the one with becoming the kanima's master and using it for his own gain except now Jackson was a werewolf and that obviously wasn't going to work so scrap it altogether and make the Argent plan take number #46.

Scott jogged to quickly catch him, matching Stiles long strides with relative ease but still looking like it was taking everything he had to keep up, which yeah, considering it was Scott who just didn't understand exactly what being a werewolf meant even after all this time, probably might've been the truth. Stiles didn't know how anybody in their day and age could not know the basics of Werewolf 101. Hell, nowadays, everybody should be able to get turned and deal with their own transformation with the amount of crap that was out there. If Stiles got turned into, say, a vampire, he'd know he was going to probably start thirsting for blood, so he'd break into the nearby hospital's blood bank, get a few dozen or whatever and stock up until he figured out how to control himself so he could like, go clubbing and drink from sexy women without killing them.

See? Freaking easy. All hail the internet.

"And do what?" Scott was saying, trying to sound persuadable as the house loomed ever so closer. "Go after the alpha pack yourself? I don't know if you've forgotten, but you're human!"

Yeah, like he wasn't painfully reminded of that every freaking day. "It's me right?" He responded, his lips curling into something that may very loosely be called a smile. "I'll find a way. I always do." It really sucked when the only person that had ever listened to him had been Peter Hale, and that was while Lydia was slowly bleeding out beneath him and the then alpha wanted Derek back. Not to mention that psycho aunt of Allison's had still been alive. Oh, and Gerard hadn't been around. Something was obviously wrong with his life if he considered that the good days.

But he'd consider any day good as long as it didn't include his _dad_ getting caught up in this mess. And today was not a good day. Today was a day that _someone_ was going to get their ass kicked, one way or another.

Erica met them on the porch as they finally reached the house, and she looked dirty – leaves in her hair, mud caked over her boots, and the fabric of her jeans ripped at her knees – like she'd been rolling around in the forest, or maybe fighting a werewolf or two. She also looked wide eyed, and the pity Stiles could see in her admittedly pretty eyes had his own vision blacking out for one seemingly eternal moment.

Because he'd seen pity like that before, and it never boded well for him.

She tried to stop him from going in, probably wanted to calm him down, make him take a deep breath, whatever, but for once Stiles was actually able to push her out of his way, heedless of werewolf strength, and he might've actually shouldered her roughly, and she might've moved back more out of shock at the blatant violence than anything else, but it worked so who gave a crap. He could hear Scott still behind him, voice lilting higher in urgency, calling his name and telling him to calm down and slow down and Stiles! as he turned sharply at the landing into what would've normally been the living room, right where Derek stood over the couch where his dad was sprawled out on.

"Jesus, dad," was the first thing blurting out of his mouth as he shoved forwards until he too stood over his thankfully awake dad. "Are you ok? What happened? Are you bleeding? Is it–" insert tongue coming to a stop, words no longer forming, eyes widening and zeroing in on the patch of skin visible over dad's shoulder, aaaaand the bite mark _right freaking there_. "I'm going to kill you Derek," Stiles hissed instead, staring down at the bite mark on his dad's shoulder. "I'm going to murder you, castrate you, put you to sleep, even!"

His dad looked like he was going to say something, something that looked like it was going to be a scolding or something very similar to the crap spewing out of Scott's mouth and he did _not_ have the time for this. Instead, Stiles rounded up on Derek, pushing in until he was close enough that he could feel Derek's breath fanning out onto his own skin, could smell whatever deodorant he used, and could see the different shades of Derek's eyes he was intimately familiar with thanks to all that time spent being pushed up into walls of buildings and derelict alleys.

"You _bit_ him?" He seethed, the muscles in his back going tight, the fine hair at the back of his neck rising and goosebumps prickling all over his arms. "You _freaking bit him_?"

"He had too, Stiles!" His dad's voice rose from behind him, doing little to tamper down the swirling tempest of anger and undeniable rage sharpening Stiles' sight. "It was either that or me dying."

Spinning on his feet, Stiles threw his hands in the air as he shouted, "Do you even _know_ what he did? Do you even realise what being bitten means?!"

"I do," dad replied calmly, and there was an apology somewhere in there, an apology in his eyes, but also a look of resolution, one Stiles knew from experience would never be wavered. "And I understand your confusion, son, but it's not Derek's fault. He saved me, twice."

"It was the alphas," Derek's deep voice said, answering Stiles next question before he could answer it. "They've finally made their move. We're just lucky Erica and Boyd mistook the Sheriff's scent for yours." Blue eyes bore into Stiles then, the intense stare coming from the man suddenly disconcerting rather than the usual creepy. "We thought you'd been attacked."

Oh. _Oh._

They thought it'd been him being (grossly) ravaged by a bunch of violent alpha werewolves. That explained Erica's wide eyed look, but it didn't explain the thin thread of _something_ in Derek's voice, something that oddly sounded like worry. Had Derek been worried, thinking it was Stiles out there almost about to die? Would Derek have saved him twice and even gone as far as to bite him just to keep him alive? No, he couldn't, he wouldn't, especially not that last one, because Stiles didn't want the bite.

He didn't want the bite.

"So they just came out of nowhere and attacked dad, and he was so bad off you thought the bite was the only way to save him." He summarised, finally calming down just a little bit to think things through. The anger was still there, the rage was still fully in play, up in first string, just like Lacrosse, and how sad was it that he was comparing his emotions to a sport most people didn't even know existed. But it was focused now, focused in the same way his therapist had told him to do when he was younger and full of panic attacks, because he'd been angry at the world for taking his mom away and rather than just being a loose cannon, it would be better if he focused all that burning red poker into something productive, something that let him let off steam. Hence, Lacrosse. "But _why_ did they attack dad? That makes no sense, what does dad have to do with anything?"

Something was missing, something crucial, something that by the looks of it dad knew and Derek knew and they were actually _wary_ of telling him. Dad he could understand – dad never liked to tell him things that weren't full of sunshine – but Derek? Wary of hurting his feelings? Of hurting _Stiles_? Same Derek that liked to threaten him in the same breath as ask for help? That liked to shove him up against things to the point a day without bruises all over his shoulders and back was a miracle? The same Derek that scared the living daylights out of him as well as string along Stiles teenager boy-hormones because he apparently liked rough treatment?

Except Derek didn't really... scare him, anymore... Actually, if Stiles admitted it to only himself, it'd been a while since he'd genuinely been afraid of Derek – afraid for his life – and quite a while since he'd been afraid of even simply just getting hurt by Derek's hands. Now it was mostly just talk, talk that Stiles found himself thinking would never actually become more than just talk. They'd saved each other enough times to the point that hurting the other would seem like destroying your hand-made Picasso. And that was just not cool. (Let's all just conveniently forget the part about his teenage boy-hormones, yeah?)

Derek was the one to finally _do_ something, and Stiles found himself startled to see his own phone being held out to him from Derek's fingers.

"The hell-? Why do you have my phone?" He grabbed it out of Derek's hands, patting his own pockets for where he last remembered pocketing the phone as he held it up to study it for imperfections, finding nothing in his pockets and nothing but the small remnants of the forest on the phone. "Dude, I swear, if you messed with it I'm going to–"

" _Stiles._ " Dad.

He stared at the phone, then at his dad, then at Derek. Derek nodded his head at the phone, confirming it, and Stiles' mouth suddenly went dry as a thousand and one scenarios played out in his head. He unlocked his phone (and despite popular belief, the password wasn't Lydia's birthday), and first checked the call records. A little bit of the dread sitting like a lead weight in his stomach disappeared, but he knew it wouldn't go away completely until he checked his text messages, so he clicked it too. And there, sitting in his sent box, was a text he knew for a fact he hadn't sent to his dad.

> _From: Stiles_   
> _'Need 2 talk 2 u. Meet me Hale house.'_

His mouth opened and shut a few times, his lips felt dry, so he licked them, knowing his dad was watching him, _feeling_ Derek's eyes boring into him, and he coughed to clear his throat. "I... I didn't send this..."

His dad sighed, sounding world weary and exhausted, but nodded his head. "Yeah, I figured as much. I was on my way here to meet you when they attacked."

"So..." And really, this was _not_ the way he wanted his dad to learn about all this. "... you know?"

A disbelieving huff was his answer. "About _werewolves_? Alphas and betas and kanimas and every single thing that's been happening in this city that's been boggling me all this time? Yeah, I know." And some people wondered where Stiles got his sarcasm from. Dad's look turned different then, from exhausted to this quiet look of pride. "Remember what I said after the game?" Not liking where the sudden change was going, Stiles nodded, because there was no way he could've forgotten that conversation, and how guilty it made him feel that his dad thought he was a hero. "I stand by it," said dad, smiling softly. "You're a good son, Stiles."

Scott was behind him, hand on Stiles shoulder. "He's a good best friend too, Mr. Stilinski."

Something twisted inside his chest, curling into a tight little ball of everything negative and thrusting a fist into his throat, and Stiles swallowed it down and averted his eyes away from his dad and best friend, away from what they said, because he liked to think he was a good son, a good best friend, a good _person,_ but if he was his own dad wouldn't be sitting there with a bite from a werewolf, and his best friend wouldn't have been walking in the forest alone for him to have gotten a bite himself. If he was a good person, a good son, a good best friend, then he wouldn't be even having these thoughts – he would've never hallucinated what he did at Lydia's party, and really, that was the root of everything, wasn't it?

In his haste to try and distance himself from the genuine praise, Stiles found himself locking eyes with Derek again, surprised to find that he'd almost forgotten about the alpha for a minute. How could he? But then again, Derek was never usually quiet when it came to these things – he usually dominated the conversation with talk of necessity and having to fight and be _ready_ , so why was he so quiet now? And why was he staring at Stiles in that same disconcerting way again? Like if Derek thought there might be something wrong with Stiles, as if he was quietly worried for Stiles, but did that even make sense?

No. This was not important. What was more important was the fact that a bunch of arrogant assholes had tricked his dad into the woods and tried to kill him, and that his dad was now infected – and considering he wasn't dead – a werewolf. But dad and Scott were still looking at him, having a moment, so he needed to dispel that first before they got to the real meat of the issue. "I've been telling you guys this since forever!" He spread his arms to gesture to himself, shrugging his shoulders and raising his eyebrows in the right angle to get across his humour. "Jeez, you're only getting this now? You guys suck. And now you've got werewolf powers to go with that suckage. What are we going to do about the alpha's?"

Footsteps came from the stairs, thumping lower to the landing as one of the old boards creaked, and Boyd came through the door rolling his right shoulder and wincing. He sat beside Erica, who patted him on the shoulder, and seemed relieved on seeing Stiles, which only made the only human in the room realise these two had gone out to fight against an alpha pack just because they thought it was _Stiles_ who was getting attacked.

Since when had they liked him, anyway?

"Where's Isaac?" He asked instead, cursing himself when his mouth wanted to ask what he'd just thought. "And Jackson, and hell, Lydia."

Derek folded his arms across his chest, muscles flexing underneath the tight tank top he always seemed to wear, and seriously, what Stiles would give to have muscles like that, damn. Or to just touch said muscles and map them out for purely scientific reasons. "I sent Isaac to get Jackson and Lydia, bring them up to speed."

Good enough answer, and Stiles forced himself to look away from Derek's neck, from the way the alpha's adams apple moved when he spoke, and thought to himself yeah, he'd probably give a _lot_ for muscles like that. "And? Alpha's running around in a pack maiming people here! Anybody have a game plan?"

Nobody really answered him, Erica and Boyd looking uncomfortable in their seats – and Stiles could totally understand that, because they fought the alpha's and probably got their ass collectively handed to them, and the only plan they were probably nursing in their heads was to run all the way to Maine or something. But he found himself still surprised when nothing came from Scott, nothing came from his dad who was apparently up to speed on the craptastic twists and turns of Beacon Hill's animal wildlife, and especially surprised when nothing came from _Derek_.

"Seriously?" He gaped, irritation colouring his words and stripping them from the usual snark and humour he was famous for (what? He totally was). "Are you _serious_? If we don't come up with a plan here, we're screwed. We are all collectively screwed. Every single on of us. And Allison and the Argent's. Oh, wait, here's a plan," and really, he did have one – it was plan number 46, except slightly altered to fit with the new information and the fact that most of his killing ire was directed to a different party other than Derek Hale. He still wanted to just hurt Derek though, maybe break an arm or two, he'd heal anyway. Maybe he could enlist Allison's dad for that, last he heard the guy still had a totally understandable grudge against the alpha for the death of his wife. "Why don't we go to the Argent's, specifically Chris, who might I remind everyone helped us with Jackson, and tell him there's an _alpha pack_ here and that they just tried to kill my dad, a human. That's their job isn't it? Protecting humans. From werewolves. And kanima's. And whatever else is in that _freaking_ bestiary _._ "

And just like every other time the name Argent came up, Derek immediately shot it down with a fierce, "No."

Casting his eyes heavenwards, Stiles turned to Derek and clapped his hands, threading his fingers together for a lack of something else to do with them. He needed coffee, and sleep. Actually, he needed a night's full of sleep, with no nightmares of red eyes and sharp teeth or scales and long claws. He needed a night's full of sleep that didn't have him and Derek dying in that swimming pool because he was _human_ and couldn't keep them afloat much longer, where Scott didn't rip him apart on a full moon because he couldn't control himself, where he didn't get a call from the hospital telling him if he could please come and that his dad was dead, followed with Lydia, with Allison, with Scott and every freaking body he'd ever met and talked to in his goddamn life.

And obviously, he needed someone to come up with _good_ ideas every now and then, because Stiles was just a normal teenager here. He didn't have mad fighting skills like Allison, he wasn't a secret genius like Lydia, and he sure as hell wasn't a werewolf, so why was it he was always the under appreciated sidekick here? It was like he was the ideas guy, and that was just not cool.

The roar of a car interrupted what probably would've been a rant coming out of Stiles' mouth, flashlights glaring through the window before getting killed off along with the engine. He could hear Lydia's voice, Jackson replying, even Isaac, and soon the three came through the door, eyes first landing on the man they only knew as The Sheriff (capital letters and all) and Stiles' Dad (again, capital letters and all). Surprisingly, Allison also came in with them, and she immediately navigated her way to Scott, where they clasped hands and gave each other lovey dovey looks.

Stiles felt like throwing something, but he caught sight of Derek looking mildly disgusted by the display from the lovebirds and found himself snorting instead. Derek's nose was scrunched up in distaste, his lips tugged down and his eyebrows furrowed together just slightly over the start of his nose. He also looked a bit... wistful...?

Stiles snorted again, because he was obviously suffering from some mild form of trauma brought on by the fact his own _dad_ was now a fully infected werewolf and how the hell was he supposed to live under the same roof as the guy? He needed to feel safe in his house, everyday, and the full moon was in like–

–"Three days."

Everybody turned to look at him, but Stiles was too busy pointing an accusing finger at both his dad and Derek. "The full moon's in three freaking days! What're you going to do? Tie my dad up to a tree?"

"If I have to." Derek replied calmly, and fuck it all, Stiles just _knew_ the bastard was serious.

"While the alpha's are _out there_ and have already _targeted_ him? Are you out of your _mind_?" Burning with the need to get some sort of common sense across, he turned beseeching eyes to Allison, watching as she looked surprise at his attention and glanced at Scott in confusion. "Allison, please, tell them; wouldn't it be a _good_ idea if we got your dad to at least _join us_ in this whole alpha pack thing?"

"Um..." She glanced at Scott again, who shrugged his shoulders and shook his head, having no clue how to help out himself. "... I guess so...?"

"Yes! Thank you! _Some_ one here at least has _some_ common sense. And as for _why_ they targeted dad, that's obvious too."

Everybody was again staring at him, waiting for his awesome deduction skills to save the day. Lydia cocked her head to the side, and Stiles could just see that she was trying to connect whatever information she had, and was coming up with something but was missing that one crucial bit of information that would make it all make _sense_. He knew that feeling, sometimes it felt like every day was like that, filled with that annoying feeling that just bugged you until you either figured it out or it decided to chomp on you and leave you for dead.

He held up his phone, indicating the text message he'd not sent to his dad, and thrust it under Derek's nose. "Meet me at Hale house? Hale house? Do you get it?"

There, Lydia reeled back as she finally understood it, grabbing a hold of Jackson to steady herself, but Stiles only had eyes for Derek. Stiles could see the crystal blue eyes darken, become something turbid and deep as understanding flared beneath them, and Stiles knew that the last of the Hale family (or well, second last, considering Peter was stalking around somewhere acting really creepy) realised the sheer _problem_ that was sitting at their feet.

The alpha's had made their move. Shit was about to hit the fan. Spectacularly.

"They wanted the Sheriff to die at my house." Derek confirmed, speaking it aloud for everybody else's sake as well as for his own. After all, saying it aloud always made something seem more _real_ , unavoidable even, and wasn't that an annoying truth to be familiar with. "They wanted me locked away by the police."

Scott looked like he was only clocking on now, and he gripped Allison tighter to him, the two almost hugging where they stood. "They wanted you out of the way..."

"So they could deal with us." Erica finished, looking resigned. "Get rid of the pack one by one, starting with the beta's."

"Weaken the alpha," Boyd continued, nodding his head in realisation. "Then take him out."

It was a good plan, a seriously good plan, and this was why they needed one better. "Thankfully though," drawled Stiles, voice dripping with dryness and sarcasm. "They failed step one. Instead, the Sheriff is now an honorary member of the pack. Meaning not only will Derek _not_ get arrested, but that the Sheriff's on our side of the law-" oh man, that was great, he'd have to remember to use that phrase again when dad was the subject. "-and he's also a werewolf. Of our pack. Meaning Derek's stronger, all you other beta's are stronger, and they'll be trying something else. Probably me next time. Especially if they don't find out about dad being a werewolf."

"No, they won't." Scott reasoned, voice injected with as much comfort he could, probably thinking Stiles was playing that 'you tried to kill me how many times again?' card. "They'll just try something else."

For a minute there, Allison actually looked like she agreed, despite being the clever girl she was, except then Derek dashed that little piece of positivity by announcing, "Yes, they will." Scott looked to him in anger and dad looked alarmed at the confirmation. Stiles felt bad about saying what he had with dad around, because the last thing he wanted was for dad to get worried – with his new found werewolf abilities, he'd have enough to worry about soon enough, especially considering his _job_ was a lot more stressful than highschool was. Trying not to change when a thief was shooting at you? Yeah, Stiles didn't think that'd be all too easy.

"They need me locked up, and they need something to happen that'll get me locked up. I might've been exonerated from everything before, but if someone dies on _my_ property that I was seen talking to? I'd be the first to get called in as a suspect."

"I can get the Sheriff," Jackson said, his first words since arriving. "It was the Sheriff that led the man hunt in trying to get Derek, so him dying would obviously make you a suspect. But Stiles?"

"He's the son of the Sheriff _and_ has been seen with Derek before." Isaac pointed out, a thoughtful look on his face. "I remember when Derek passed out in the parking lot and you guys put him in your car and drove off."

Scott looked confused for a second, so Stiles mouthed _'Wolfsbane bullet'_ at him, and the confusion was replaced with understanding. Yeah, Stiles had almost forgotten about that too – except now that he thought about it, Derek had smacked him into his steering wheel, hadn't he? Asshole.

"So we stage a trap," Stiles finished it up with, once more clapping his hands together. "I become little red riding hood – hey, I even have a red hoodie – and go trapaising off into the woods. They come growling and biting, and I deploy my mad dodging skills, and you guys come in to save the day." And wait for it, see everybody get gearing up to argue, see his dad look outraged at the plan, and now- "Oh, and we get Allison's dad to help us out too, because he's actually _good_ at alpha hunting. Remember that? So he can, you know, shoot wolfsbane bullets at the alpha's that'll be trying to rip my throat out while you guys do your thing? Yeah? 'Cuz that's a good plan."

And there we go. Chaos.

Dad was up on his feet, loudly disapproving of the plan, and Scott was completely with him. Allison was trying to make adjustments, ways to make sure Stiles wasn't actually the one in danger, and Jackson looked like he was shooting down each and every one of her ideas simply because they weren't plausible. Isaac, Boyd and Erica just looked uneasy where they were huddled together. Stiles actually felt bad for them, but even though they looked uneasy, they didn't seem defeated, and he liked to think that if nothing else, they at least seemed to be good friends with each other. People needed friends. This life was hard enough being human let alone a werewolf.

Fingers curled around his left biceps, the tips biting into his flesh in a way that really said it all as to who it might be, and Stiles was tugged backwards a bit until he was out of the main chaos that was the pack (now including his dad, which he was still totally pissed about and was going to address as soon as he goddamn could). He never once felt Derek's eyes leave him throughout the whole conversation, and now those ice blue eyes – red when they glowed with alphaness – were locked with his own as Derek blatantly stared at him intensely. The plan needed to get approved by Derek, _had_ to get the go ahead by Derek, because while Stiles sorta trusted in Scott's skills as a badass werewolf, he still didn't feel comfortable going into the woods as bait with only Scott as his backup. Derek was an alpha now, and even before when he wasn't, he was still pretty freaking awesome in a fight, and that was necessary here, it was _necessary_.

It wasn't until he could feel more than just Derek's eyes on him that Stiles realised they were standing just like before, when Stiles had been livid and ready to deploy some of that miracle human strengths that gave mothers the power to save their children from fallen trees or whatever, and now with the added bonus of Derek's fingers still hot and tight around Stiles' arm. Derek studied him, eyes finally breaking from the lock it'd forced on Stiles, and roved around Stiles' face, his hair, the space between his eyebrows, the bridge of his nose, his lips, and the rise and fall of Stiles' chest.

In return, Stiles found himself studying Derek back, like he always did whenever they were this freaking close, because staring into each other's eyes when one had thrown you into the wall was really awkward when there was only a space of like, two centimetres between you. So he looked elsewhere, at the space right above Derek's eyes and beneath his eyebrows, the hooded effect it gave his face, his jaw, the strong line of it that descended to his chin, and when he looked there he saw Derek's bottom lip, and from there his top lip, and both of them together looked surprisingly soft and maybe being a werewolf meant never having dry, broken lips? He probably never needed a chap stick, and the thought of lips and how dry they could get made Stiles think of his own, and before he knew it, he was running a wet tongue over them, moistening them up, feeling suddenly self-conscious and awkwardly aware of himself.

The fingers momentarily tightened on Stiles' arm, bruising the skin there, Stiles' nerves alighting for a second before the fingers let up on their pressure, and Derek's eyes had dropped to Stiles' mouth, had watched him lick his lips, and for a minute there, Derek looked lost, absolutely fucking lost, and Stiles suddenly didn't understand a damn thing happening.

Then whatever Derek had been looking for, he must've found, because he let him go and took a pointed step back, widening the space between them, and suddenly Stiles felt as if an Arctic wind had blown in the suddenly open space between them because he felt _cold_.

Derek gave a single nod before breaking eye contact again, instead looking towards the still arguing group. "Fine." He said aloud, and everybody went quiet, even dad, and Stiles just knew it was because that inner primitive part in every surviving organism in the world would recognise it when something faster and stronger than you spoke – even if you were human. "We'll do it."

Dad didn't want too, Stiles could see it, but dad had reached his quota of bodily movements for the day and fell back onto the couch, slouching in his seat with a tired sigh, fingers grappling to try and make himself sit up. Stiles took a step towards his dad, stopped when he saw him wince, and realised the change must be already happening. Knowing dad needed to get used to the sudden heightened sense of hearing, he quickly and with as much grace as possible made his way to his dad, seating himself beside him and patting him consolingly on the knee. "We'll talk later, dad, I promise. But you might want to take a nap now."

He was surprised when Derek was suddenly there too, gently pushing at dad's shoulders until he was resting his head on the sofa's arm rest, and Stiles dutifully put his dad's feet up on his own lap, knowing he wasn't going anywhere until his dad was past the three day mark, and more importantly, past the full moon.

"Rest," Derek's deep timber voice said, directed to his father, but sounding like it was meant for Stiles too. "Your body still needs to heal, even though you'll get better faster now."

"But..." Dad responded, stubbornly holding on even as he melted into the surprisingly comfortable sofa, hands finally resting limply against the fabric of his shirt covering his stomach.

" _Dad._ " Stiles.

Dad huffed, shaking his head to himself as he stared up at the burned building. "So this is my life now." He mused to himself, voice filled with the appropriate amount of disbelief and incredulousness that Stiles thought warranted the situation. "Well, at least it'll keep things interesting."

"Yeah, dad." Stiles agreed amiably, watching as his father's eyes drooped until they finally stopped rising. "That's one way to see it."

* * *

Boyd and Erica were sharing the couch, Erica actually sitting in it while Boyd rested on the arm rest. Isaac stood next to them, leaning on the headrest, hands stuffed in his pockets, and the three of them seemed comfortable in their bizarre little club of three. Actually, if Stiles looked closely, he was pretty sure Boyd had an arm over the headrest, fingers suspiciously disappearing behind Isaac's back, and Erica had a hand on both the boys, which, okay, maybe they really were a club of three, or, considering there was actually a term for this, _that term_ , because he so didn't want to actually think it and much less acknowledge it and just oh my god ew.

Dad was sleeping the sleep of the dead, but every now and then he twitched, and his eyebrows furrowed together in the way that Stiles knew meant he was in pain, yet he kept sleeping right on. Stiles rested himself, comfortable with his dad's feet on his lap, like all those times they'd watch some late night movie together at home and dad demanded to be shown respect because he was an officer of the law and officer's should be able to put their feet up on their son's lap and get foot massages on a nightly basis, dammit. They hadn't had a late night movie lately, not for a while now, not with dad getting busier and Stiles hanging out with Scott and later on getting caught up in all this drama.

"Allison, we need you to speak to your dad about this. Tell him what's going on, and tell him of our plan." Derek commanded quietly, glancing at her for a moment before staring back at Stiles' sleeping dad. It would've been creepy if it was anyone else doing the staring, but considering who it was, Stiles didn't really find it all that pressing.

Allison nodded and got up, smiling reassuringly at Stiles who gave an awkward one back. "I'll go with you," offered Scott, and at her nod he got up and the two left the house on silent feet. Silent feet on Scott made sense – werewolf, everybody! – but Allison? Remind Stiles to never get on her bad side. Ever.

"Jackson, your responsibility is Lydia. There's always a chance they'll set their sights on her, or you too, so keep track of each other and keep each other safe. I also want you here most of the time, especially as we get closer to the full moon. Got it?"

Frowning, Jackson grudgingly agreed, and next to him Lydia huffed but kept her attention to her nails, inspecting them for who knew what. Stiles figured the two were together again – that last kiss and hug and you know, _everything,_ sort of gave that impression – and yeah, this full moon would be Jackson's first as a werewolf, and considering his past experience with the full moon and after, he could use all of Derek's help.

So could dad, actually.

"Stiles," did Derek's sound uncomfortable? "You need to go home."

What? " _What_?"

"You need to act normal, you need to act like you know the alpha's attacked your dad but you don't know why." Derek went on, looking like there was a bad taste in his mouth he just couldn't get rid off. "And you need to go to the station and get your dad some days off. Preferably three, or four, actually. He needs to stay here where I can keep an eye on him. We can't do anything until after the full moon anyway."

"No way!" Shit, dad was frowning, probably hearing his voice, so Stiles tried again but quieter. "Can't I just, I dunno, stay here?"

Derek growled, a low noise that rumbled and raised the fine hairs all over Stiles' body, and the remaining wolves in the room sat a little straighter as Derek's eyes glowed red. "No, you can't. You know how we get as the full moon gets closer. Do you really want to be in a house full of werewolves by yourself?" Stiles opened his mouth to say something, probably something along the lines of 'it wouldn't be the first time' or 'you'll need the practice anyway' when Derek gritted his teeth and interrupted him before he could even get a sound out. "Do you really want your dad to have attacking you on his conscience?"

Damn it. Of course he didn't. Well played, Derek Hale. Well played. "Fine," he answered, scraping his nails across the short buzz cut of his hair as he looked down to come up with a way to move dad's feet off his lap without waking him. "But you better keep an eye on him. All the time. And take care of him. And feed him. And keep him comfortable." Task completed, Stiles carefully stood up and placed his dad's feet back onto the sofa, wincing slightly at the twitch his dad gave at the movement. He still slept on though. "He likes black coffee in the morning, with three spoons of sugar and no milk, and he'll try and get unhealthy food from you but don't let him because then his blood pressure will go off the roof and he'll get dizzy or it'll drop and he'll get bitchy and–"

"– _Stiles_."

Wow, now Derek sounded like his dad. Who taught him how to say his name like that, anyway?

Heaving a huge sigh, Stiles relented and began to leave, casting a last glance at his dad who slept on obliviously. Now that he was a werewolf, that meant no more talk of his health, no more worrying about his dad getting a stroke or something outlandish and completely mother nature's fault, because now he was part of mother nature, or of anti-mother nature, or whatever the hell the supernatural was considered in terms of the Earth and The Universe and Everything In It.

Derek stared right back at him, probably wanting him to just leave already, and wow, today hadn't been all too bad considering there hadn't even been a single threat. Maybe Derek was trying to endear himself to dad, because what a way to chase someone out of your pack by threatening their son, right?

"He'll be fine."

Stiles blinked, and yes, that had been Derek that said it, and why was Lydia looking between them both with a strangely frightening look of thoughtfulness? Maybe she wanted to try and be a werewolf again, although apparently girl's were even more scary as werewolves than the guys were, if what Isaac and Boyd had told him about Erica was true. Stiles thought it was kinda hot, the fact girl's could handle more pain _and_ went full hulk twice rather than once, but it also scared the living shit out of him too. Thank god Erica was the only female wolf he knew. Hopefully she'd always stay the only one he knew.

"Fine." Stiles repeated himself, forcing himself to walk away from the last family member he had. "Fine, Ok, alright, I'll hold you to that. But you better freakin' answer your phone whenever I call, or answer whenever I text, because I will, and–"

"Oh for god's sake." Jackson was out of his seat. Jackson was coming towards him. Holy shit was Jackson going to kill him already? No, instead, Jackson grabbed a hold of the collar of his sweater and dragged him away, mumbling to himself about Stiles being annoying and talking too much, and before he was forcibly removed from the premises, Stiles yelled out another warning to Derek that if he didn't freaking pick up his phone when Stiles called, there would be hell to pay. "Where's your piece of metal?"

"Uuh..." Stiles adjusted his clothing as soon as Jackson let go of him, glad that Jackson's claws weren't anywhere near the vulnerable skin of his neck, and pointed in the direction he'd come walking from. "That-a way, captain. Or, um, _Co-captain._ "

And oh yeah, Jackson was definitely a werewolf now, he even growled like one!

By the time they got to the Jeep, Stiles already had his keys in his hand, and was already thinking of a major flaw in their plan. "You guys do realise I could easily get killed in my house when I'm all alone and then just dumped off around here, right?"

Heaving a sigh, Jackson watched as he climbed in behind the wheel. "So I'll drop off Lydia so you two can trade hair tips while I do whatever the hell it is Derek wants me to do here."

Oh cool, he'd get Lydia to himself for a few hours. That was awesome. "He wants to train you, like he did with Erica and the others. Make sure he trains my dad too, yeah?"

"Whatever." Jackson was such a dick. "Go home, Stilinski."

Ignition turned on, the Jeep coughed and spluttered her way to life, and Jackson took a disgusted step back and started walking back to the house. "Yeah, love you too!" Stiles shouted after him, just to piss him off, but when no answer came back, he cursed himself and carefully tried to navigate his way out of all these goddamn trees. It took a while to get back to the beaten up trail path, but from there it wouldn't really be hard to get home.

No, what would be hard was trying not to spazz out too much and drive himself into a ditch and die of human causes like idiocy rather than a big bad (were)wolf. Yeah, that was going to be excruciatingly difficult. Especially so considering he'd just missed his scheduled pill popping time and the nerves and jitters where making his fingers itch and his focus was sharpening and dimming and everything suddenly seemed like so much brighter and he was going home right? Home to an empty house because dad was at Derek's where he would start training to be a werewolf and at least now Stiles wouldn't have to worry about his dad in the line of duty or dying from cancer like mom did and what would mom think about this if she'd been alive anyway? Would she hate Stiles for bringing this to dad? Blame him even? If she were alive would he and dad grow even closer than they were now in their pursuit to a) keep her safe and b) in the dark? Would she be disappointment because she could feel they were lying about things like dad had known for a while now that Stiles was totally making shit up and was obviously caught up in some serious shit? Would-, would-, would-

-Shit, he really should've taken his adderall.

It wasn't every day he accidentally forgot to take one, but it'd happened enough times that Stiles knew how to deal with it and make do until he could pop one into his mouth and maybe even take a nap. He hated the freaking pills, but he hated how he became without them even more, and driving was enough to keep most of his attention anyway – especially with the very real threat of enemy werewolves out there vying for someone's blood.

Alpha's man, all bat shit crazy.

He flipped on the radio, nodding his head to some heavy house music that blasted out of the speakers, and drove through sceneries he'd seen practically every day of his life since birth. The sun was struggling valiantly to hold on to the last few specks of sky, but obviously gravity was pulling it down under the ocean of the horizon, and soon the sun would be drowning in the deep dark recess of the night while the moon cackled like a bitch. Stiles didn't like the moon – anything that changed shape in the sky just freaked him the fuck out – but the only person that had genuinely seemed to understand that notion had been his mom, even if she'd laughed herself to tears before giving him a sloppy kiss on his cheek. He must've been six or something then, because five, six and seven where the years he started to realise he couldn't just blurt out every single concept that came into his head. At least Scott was way too passive to have been creeped out by him, or maybe Scott had just not understood a word he said but followed along because Stiles was a grabby little kid that didn't wait for a refusal. He'd been really forceful as a kid back then, and Scott had been even more of a pushover than he was now. Thankfully that had changed throughout the years, at least.

Speaking of which, now that he thought about it, they were all pretty much the same as they'd been when they were kids. Lydia was still a genius and the most popular girl in school. Jackson was still a prick (back then he'd even been an actual bully, the asshole), and Boyd, the only one he could remember back then from the little 'club' the three beta's made had been pretty awesome during reading time. Dude had been reading the whole Narnia books in grade four. Stiles still cringed whenever he saw just how thick those books were.

What had Derek been like though? As a kid? Before the fire and everything. What was it like being born a werewolf into a whole family, a whole pack, of them? There'd been humans in that fire as well, even human children, so it must've been a huge freaking pack, and one of those awesome huge families that had loud, noisy, barbecue's in the back yard. Had Derek been like Scott as a kid? Pleasant and average and just satisfied with the simplest of things? Or had Derek always taken on too much responsibility and appointed himself the task of making sure his cousins never got hurt, along with whatever the other kids his age or younger around the house had been? Yeah, Stiles could see it now, Derek with his tiny hands fisted on his hips, glowering adorably at a bunch of toddlers rolling around in the dirt, telling them they were getting their clothes dirty. Maybe even Derek standing up to a bully that was four years older than him, glaring at the injustice of it all.

Stiles would _pay_ to see that. Too bad any family album's that might've existed would've burned up with the flames.

The Jeep easily fitted into the slot of parking space in front of his house, so Stiles patted his baby's steering wheel and hopped out of it, making sure that his windows were closed and the Jeep was securely locked. He looked around the empty street, seeing not a soul around, but more importantly he saw no glowing red dots or fierce pointy teeth so he figured all was good. Digging his phone out of his pocket, he unlocked it as he made his way to his door and turned the key in, opening it up just as he selected the psuedoname Derek on his contact list and chose the 'send sms' option.

> _TO: Creeper_
> 
> _'Is he still sleeping? Don't give him coffee when he wakes up. Just cuz he's wolfie like u don't mean he should get high on caffeine.'_

Text sent, he put it on top of the shoe drawer inside the hallway and turned around to lock the door, securing the dead bolt, the chain, the lock and every other paranoid combination of security his dad had installed ever since he decided to go into law enforcement. Grabbing the phone back up as he toed off his shoes, he walked around the house making sure all the windows were locked, investigating every dark corner that could hold a potentially wolf-y person, and then collapsed down onto the sofa in the living room with a pill and a glass of water.

His phone made a deep gong sound, signalling the arrival of a text message, and surprised, Stiles clicked it open.

> _FROM: Creeper  
>  'He's fine.'_

Wow, Derek had actually replied back. That was a miracle. Usually, if whatever Stiles had sent wasn't a matter of life and death (and even then), Derek usually didn't answer back until like a day later. Stiles had been prepared to not get an answer at all for this, so he had to give credit where credit was due, and realise he was an idiot because of course Derek would answer, this was Stiles' dad they were talking about. If there was _one_ thing Stiles had figured out about the alpha, it was that he took family seriously to the point of a ninja code or something. And Stiles could get behind that – was one of the reasons why he _was_ behind that (cough, behind that in the sense he was _with_ Derek and not actually _behind_ him, and wait, why was he even thinking such a clarification was even needed?).

Well, tomorrow was Friday, so Sunday night was going to be the full moon. That was alright, tomorrow he could get the news from Scott about how dad was doing, and he'd go by the station early in the morning and tell them dad had caught a bad cold or whatever. He'd heard from Ms McCall that it was spreading around or something. Would totally make sense. Yeah, great.

"You, Stiles, are amazing," he praised himself, speaking out loud to the empty room. "Even if you are completely alone in your own house."

The sun set down as he stretched out on the sofa, letting his feet drop down onto the arm rest at the opposite end while he stuffed his face in a sofa-pillow (or whatever it was they called these wondrous creations of the modern era). The silence irked him a little, made his mind go faster and his thoughts scream louder to fill it up, and seriously, no freaking wonder Derek was the way he was if he spent all his time in that broken ransack of a house all on his own.

Maybe after all this crap calmed down, he'd suggest the guy build it up again.

Derek would probably punch him.

* * *

"So yeah, he's totally got a cold, so I'd give him a few days before he's in any condition to be wielding a gun," explained Stiles, flailing a hand in an imitation of what his father would probably do with a gun while on his cold medicine. Technically, it wasn't too far from the truth. Mom would kill them both if she knew the sort of things they'd gotten up too after her demise. Let's just say there'd been a huge learning curve and lots of damage repair. "And he says if any strange or mysterious or just bizarre cases come through with dead bodies and patterns and blood splatters to send them through to me," no, he hadn't, and dad never would, but Stiles needed to inject just a bit of blatant lie to make the truth seem more realistic. "You know, so I could pass it over to him."

His dad's partner gave him a look that clearly said Stiles wasn't bullshitting anyone, but just like he'd planned, the 'cold excuse' had gone through without a hitch. "Give him our best wishes yeah?" Tom ordered him, accompanying the words with his 'you listen to your elders, boy' look he'd perfected the very first day he caught Stiles trying to sneak into an evidence room. "And tell him not to trouble you too much. I know he gets bitchy when he's sick."

Stiles snorted, totally not refusing that at all. "Sure will, man. Remember, those cases that may or may not turn up? To me."

"Get the hell out of my station, Stiles."

And there was his cue to leave like yesterday. "Technically, it's dad's."

Jesus, cops shouldn't be allowed to point guns at the Sheriff's son.

Climbing into his Jeep, Stiles sent a victory text to Scott, and got back a celebratory message almost instantly. He drove his way to school, parking in his usual spot – goddamn porsche always in his line of sight, one day he was going to do something to it and Jackson would _cry_ – and spilled out of his beloved with less grace than usual. He was a swan, all limbs and beauty and awe-inspiring, and people just didn't have the necessary requirements of Swan-Eyes to see it. He was the swan princess, cursed to turn into something less awesome than himself right at the crucial moments, and Scott was probably the talking frog while Lydia was the talking parrot or whatever and he couldn't really remember the details because the last time he'd watched it he'd been four and it'd been in Norwegian because mom's best friend was totally Norwegian and thought it'd be hilarious to teach Stiles all the songs in it _in Norwegian_ and people wondered why Stiles had turned out the way he did.

But considering his best friend and most of the people he hung around with were werewolves and Allison was a badass hunter of werewolves and Lydia was Something Else Entirely, people should give him an honest to God Nobel Prize for Putting Up With All This Shit And Still Coming Out Relatively Unscathed.

He was going to write a novel based on his life, do a Stephen Mayor move and aim it to all the impressionable simple minded teenagers out there and call it something totally unoriginal like Teen Wolf. He bet Allison liked that thing with the glittery vampires, she seemed like the type. Hell, even Scott did. The sacrifices he made for company.

Although now that he thought about it, that was actually a good plan. His life was awesome for a book deal – he could get rich – like J.K. Rowling and her Harry Potter and _dude_ , this was so going as number 1 in his plans for the future way above becoming a genius mechanical engineer because he was actually good with his hands and putting one and two together and oh shit Derek would totally not let him write about werewolves.

Fucking sourwolf.

Scott was sitting in his seat in homeroom, making googly eyes at Allison who was _right beside him_ , and the only seat free was the one behind Scott. This meant Stiles would be subject to watching them be sickeningly mate-ish with each other, and maybe that was really it and werewolves had soul-mates and Derek just hadn't told them because he had this problem with talking and divulging Highly Important Information of the Important Kind. Acronyms of that would be something like HIIIK, which was actually awesome. Like 'hike', except more like 'hiiik' because life just sucked like that.

"Derek told me to tell you to watch out and stay alert. He doesn't want you to get hurt." Scott informed him as their English teacher came in and immediately asked about who had done their reading. Stiles rolled his eyes at her, because seriously? He'd read _Of Mice and Men_ when he was eleven or something, and secretly cried at the ending. Or maybe he'd been crying because mom was in the hospital again-

-and what the fuck why was he thinking about mom so much lately he didn't need this freaking punch to the heart every time he thought of her and the way she smelled and the way she looked in the hospital bed and the way she'd cried when she thought nobody could see her and how she always grabbed on extra tight when visiting hours were over and she didn't want him to go because she was afraid she'd never see him again and-

-"Mr. Stilinski?"

Get a grip on yourself, Stilinski. No tears in English class. "Uh, ugh, sorry," he muttered, sniffing to try and keep the burn in his eyes away. "It's just, Lenny. Rabbits. _Everything_." Cue despondent sniff and _bam_ , the teacher was totally head over heels for him.

Oh yeah, he'd definitely be getting an A in this class.

Scott looked clueless – which was the default look on his face anyway – while Allison actually looked impressed. Maybe she'd forgotten that _Stiles_ wasn't the one failing his classes, because while being the only really weak-as-a-human human, he still had time to do his homework and cruise by at a relatively good mark. Only thing teachers had to say about him was his attitude and attention problems, and honestly, dad was totally resigned to that. "And dad?" He whispered back, leaning forward in his chair as Scott leaned back. "Wait, did you say Derek didn't want me to get hurt? Is he, like, _worried_ about me?"

Lips pulling into an unwilling grin, Scott shook his head fondly and answered the really important question here. "Your dad's fine. After speaking to Allison's dad we went back over and he was awake and everything. Don't worry."

Don't worry his ass. Dad had a trigger happy finger and now he was going to have a trigger happy _claw_ , and if that wasn't the main issue here Stiles didn't know what was. Except the last time dad had actually shot someone it had been a serial killer passing through Beacon Hills picking off people and the FBI had awarded dad with a really cool pen. Or something. Stiles hadn't really been listening because he'd been too freaked out about the fact that his dad had pretended to be the serial killer's target and had almost gotten himself killed along the way.

Seriously, he was surrounded by martyrs. First dad, then Scott, and the biggest martyr of them all, Derek.

"So, Mr. Stilinski." Shit, teacher alert, teacher alert, mayday, mayday. "Since you're the only one that seems to have read it _all_ rather than the set three chapters, why don't you tell us which was your favourite part of the book?"

Crap. Stiles hated questions like this. He hated English as it was, with all the questions that never had a right or wrong answer and why couldn't this stuff be as simple and straightforward as maths for God's sake? At least maths had only one answer. You just had to struggle to get to it. "Oh you know," he stalled, trying to remember the hazy memories he had of the book. "The whole bit where they always speak about their future and what they're gonna have and rabbits and–"

"–Okay, Mr. Stilinski, breathe." He didn't need to breathe, who did this lady think he was? "I've got to say, I'm impressed. Keep up the good work." He saluted her, wincing as his hand smacked a bit too hard against his forehead, and ignored the snickers that broke out around him.

The clocked ticked on, the lesson finished, they moved on to another lesson, Allison went bye bye, Scott finally got his head out of the cloudy fog of teenage romance, and Mr. Harris was glaring at him from over his desk. Great. There was still a few minutes left before class officially started, so Stiles put it to good use by calculating how long it'd been since his last dosage and realised he needed to take a pill now before he totally lost his shit. He _really_ didn't want to give Harris anymore reasons to hate him, although why the guy hated Stiles in the first place was anybody's guess.

He dug into his backpack, rooting around for where he kept his pills, and crowed silently in victory when his fingers closed around it. The little white bottle proudly stated ADDERALL XR, telling the whole world or those that deemed to look at the right second that the person holding the bottle was a total ADHD-er. He fingered out one of the orange pills, scowling at it before popping it into his mouth like a popcorn, and chased it down with a bottle of water he always kept at hand. That done, he thrust a hand into his pocket, then another, then a third, finally finding his phone and taking it out as Harris continued glaring at him from his pale face. Still five minutes left to class, dude, until then Stiles could do what he wanted. And it'd been a whole two minutes since he'd last texted (read: annoyed) Derek for an update.

> _TO: Creeper_   
> _'just cuz he's a howler now doesn't mean he don't need food. Feed him. N don't eat him.'_
> 
> _TO: dad_   
> _'is he feeding u? Don't listen 2 his growls, his barks worse than his bite.'_

He hesitated for a minute, the last text still not sent (and hurray for autocorrect), and after a quick mental argument quickly added on the real question;

> _'are you ok?'_

"Alright, class," boomed Harris' voice, grabbing everybody's attention. "If I see another phone out or anybody talking, detention. The lesson has officially started."

He felt his phone vibrate, thankfully on the vibrate setting rather than normal, and then he felt it vibrate again – two text messages, maybe Derek had actually replied again, and wouldn't that be just the sign to the apocalypse? – probably just dad texting him, and then forgetting something and texting him again. Seriously, Stiles didn't think anybody's dad ever replied to a text with a hundred and three responses. It was a good thing they'd both changed to a yearly plan a while back, otherwise the amount of money they'd be paying would've been ridiculous.

He couldn't bring it out to check though, not with being Harris' main focus, so he resigned himself to spending forty five minutes of being stared down at disdainfully by a man that could give Snape a run for his money. But no way was he just going to waste his time on chemical equations and what mixing so and so with so and so produced, because that stuff was boring and not really interesting unless it was molotov cocktails and Lydia was _awesome_ , man. Notebook out, Stiles turned to the last page and started scribbling down the main gist of what he knew, using shortcut writing and dipping into internet speak absorbed from hours spent on the online gaming communities in the off chance case Harris actually confiscated his book. There was no way anybody could know about this, so he used chat speak even the likes of Lydia wouldn't understand. And 1337. Lots and lots of 1337.

By the time the bell rang and class was over, he had about three pages worth of complete and utter scribbles, the like that made the whole white page seem like a grey colouring book (he'd been using a pencil – don't ask why). But he also had a plan. Or three. And basically back up plans because the first plans never actually worked for some reason. Oh, if only he'd been Bruce Wayne, all that money would mean half of these plans of his would be financially capable.

"How is he, anyway?" Stiles asked again as he threw his backpack over his shoulder, eyes tracking Lydia bending over to grab her own bag. "Dad, I mean. With everything."

Scott thought about it for a second, giving it the due necessary requirement of thought before answering. "Honestly, he's being really cool about it. And when I was there it actually seemed like him and Derek were getting along."

That did not sound good. "Noooo," whined Stiles, stepping back to let a cute girl walk through the exit before he followed after her. "They can _not_ get along together. This does not work. This is not _good_."

"Personally, I think it's great," commented Allison, and really, what did she know? She was a hunter dating a werewolf. If Stiles had found out _his_ girlfriend was a furry beast of the night, he would've totally joined his hunter dad up and saved his own ass – screw highschool romance. "Derek could use someone like your dad, and your dad just seemed really glad to know what was going on."

Dear god, Stiles could see it now, dad and Derek ganging up on him to _do_ things. As if he already didn't give up enough for this pack. Just look at his non-existentlove life. Even Scott had a girlfriend, for crying out loud!

"Whatever," he sighed, coming to a stop at the intersection that led to different parts of the building, half of his mind stuck on the image of his dad and Derek telling him to _stay in the car_ or something equally damsel-y whenever shit hit the fan. "I got economics now, and you guys have..."

"English." Allison said, and yeah, that was because they didn't share the same homeroom.

"Math." Scott grumbled, and yeah, that was because he was _failing it._

He waved them goodbye, watched a bit as they gave each other the eyes before huffing and turning around to go to his own class. Now that he was free of distractions, he took out his phone and clicked it open to the two new text messages, and yup, just as he'd thought, both of them were from his dad and none from Derek. Adjusting the strap of his backpack to sit more comfortably on his shoulder, he read through them and scoffed. It was just like dad to scold him for nothing. _Who_ was it that went to a previously thought of murderer's broken house in the middle of the forest because of a text message? Yeah, dad, way to be a detective.

The hallway that led to economy class was surprisingly not as noisy as he was used too. Stiles stopped for a moment, looked around, and because he liked to keep himself amused with humour, sniffed the air in the off chance case he was gaining abilities from all the supernatural people in his life through osmosis. Nope, the hallways smelled like air, i.e. like nothing, except oh hey, _nobody was around_. Where was Johnny? Or Isabella? Hell, where was Boyd? Economics was the class he even got to _know_ of Boyd in, so the guy should've popped up out of nowhere with his freaky new werewolfiness and basked in the awesomeness that was Stiles. In fact, where was Samiya too? You could always see her brightly coloured headscarf bobbing about in the hallways. This was strange, suspiciously strange, and strange enough Stiles tightened his hold on his backpack and realised he might have to start running really freaking soon.

Actually, make that now, because he was definitely seeing glowing red eyes coming from the end of the hallway.

Stiles didn't waste time in running the opposite direction, wincing every time his backpack smacked against his back and bruised him, and the way he skidded and almost fell flat on his face really didn't help him in his bid to outrun a _werewolf_. Where was help when you needed it? Why were the alpha's attacking so freaking quickly? Why couldn't they just wait until the full moon where they were probably stronger or whatever and Stiles and co actually _had a plan_? And where was Scott when you _needed him_?

Something slashed at his right ankle, bright hot pain exploded and drowned him under white when he next stood on it, and he must've buckled because next thing he knew he was on the floor. He only got a hand underneath him to push up when something heavy landed on top of him, punching the air out of him, and Stiles dropped to the floor and didn't even bother holding back the pained noise coming from his throat.

His backpack had fallen off somewhere, probably when his vision had gone white with pain, and whatever was on top of him – _alpha_ , his mind supplied, so far just one, and why would they bother with more than one? – didn't care that he was just human, that it could crack his ribs and puncture his lungs and heart if it continued applying more weight on him, and Stiles vision was going black at the edges, dots were swimming around his lovely view of the school floor, and the hallways were still empty, he was still alone, and this was it, he was going to die, wasn't he?

A claw trailed the dip of his spine, going lower to his legs, and further down. The weight finally subsided, and Stiles drew in a ragged breath that hurt him more than helped, and stayed still and painfully quiet as the claw traced his femoral artery. Just a nick, and he'd be bleeding to death, that's how easy it would be to kill him right now, except the claw went further down and _oh-_

-his ankle. _His ankle._

Stiles gave in and passed out.

* * *

"Hey, Boyd, have you seen Stiles anywhere?"

Boyd shook his head, looking confused as he sat down on the table the Hale pack had unknowingly claimed. "No, I thought he was with you guys. Didn't turn up for economy either."

Scott looked around, enhanced eyesight taking in everybody around the cafeteria in search of his best friend. When he couldn't see him, he frowned to himself. Then his phone buzzed.

> _FROM: Stiles_   
> _'skipping skl. Going 2 see dad.'_

"Oooh," said Scott, holding up the screen so everyone could see. "He's just gone to Derek's. Worried about his dad."

"That's sweet," Lydia responded, looking thoughtful. "Even the way he acted last night. I didn't think he'd be like that."

Scott smiled, smile going wider when Allison plopped down into the seat beside him, grateful that her dad had grudgingly given the go ahead for them to be together. "Yeah, you should've seen the way he was this one time his dad fainted from too much work."

His phone buzzed again, and Scott looked down to see another text from Stiles.

> _FROM: Stiles_   
> _'heldkaslfjairtasdfkjfs'_

Snickering, he shook his head fondly and started eating his sandwich. "Must've forgotten to lock it before stuffing it in his pants."


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 2! Thanks to everybody for the lovely comments and buncha kudos, you're all absolutely amazing. <3 In other news, still not beta'd, so prepare yourself once more for a few mistakes here and there (many thanks, again, to [sheepnamedpig](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Sheepnamedpig/pseuds/Sheepnamedpig) for corrections). I don't like this chapter. Seems choppy and badly written. But I like the content. /sighs
> 
> Also, in my eyes, Stiles takes Adderall XR 30mg, two times a day. Max. dose is apparently 90mg (I did _research_!), normal is just 15mg, so this seems a safe medium. I don't know if an overdose can cause death, but considering that most pills can and this is something that _releases_ something into your bloodstream, I'm guessing it pretty much can. Artistic license. Hah.
> 
> If the ending's a bit awkward, it's because none of this was meant to be chapter-style, so now I'm finding good enough places to call it quits. This was supposed at only 6K, so I felt sorry and added a bit more. 8D

Somebody was groaning. Whoever it was, they sounded like they were in pain. Chin resting on his chest, Stiles blinked heavy crusted eyes open, seeing nothing but more darkness for a moment before his vision focused. He could see his chest, the graphic logo on his shirt, the zipper of his sweater open and on either side, the strings hanging from the hoodie. He noticed his sweater was red, his shirt grey, his jeans the normal denim blue, but then someone groaned again, and was that a whimper he heard?

Something was swinging up above, a light bulb maybe, because the main and only light source in wherever he was was swaying sideways slowly like a pendulum. It did funny things to his eyes, made it seem like there was an ocean beneath him, and the ocean was rocking left to right and right to left, swallowing him whole, and suddenly it felt like that water was sitting on his chest, the heavy pressure of it strangling his lungs, making the air escape in one fell swoop, and all of a sudden he couldn't breathe, he couldn't _breathe_.

Stiles let his lips slide open, struggled to raise his head from his chest, let it rest against the cold wall behind him, and tried to gulp down sweet oxygen into his deprived body. He knew he was panicking, could feel the cold dredges of it sinking into his core, the metaphorical water lapping at his throat, taunting him, threatening to go higher and cover him whole, and he knew somehow that this wasn't the time for it, that he had more important things to do. He scrambled to sit properly, raised his knees from the floor so he could stuff his head in between them, and tried to gulp down air as carefully and professionally as he could. It took a while, but finally, finally, the wave ebbed away, returning back to whence it came from, and Stiles was left shaking and sweaty, high of the success of preventing another full blown panic attack, except the floor underneath him was cold and the wall behind him was even colder and where was he exactly?

His whole body hurt, now that he thought about, and he winced as he tried sitting back up again properly, his muscles protesting the movement after being in a state of unconsciousness for who knew how long. It was still hard to see around, but a look up showed that he'd been right with the light bulb – and it really was swaying, held to the ceiling with nothing but a single wire, which seemed a bit strange, since shouldn't places like these have those bars instead? His head hurt like a bitch, his throat felt raw, like he'd been screaming himself hoarse, and his right ankle throbbed painfully and ached like the most terrifying warning known to man. He had his theories, but the number one most plausible one was that it was just sprained. Sprained and cut to ribbons, maybe. Maybe the alpha had torn his Achilles heel or something to keep him from moving.

Did that mean he was infected? Jackson had gotten the initial lycan virus from Derek's claws, hadn't he? But hadn't he read somewhere that it needed to be deep to qualify as a bite? At least the injury at his ankle seemed to be the worst, the only one bad enough for blood to be in the equation, because everything else felt superficial compared to it. Wolves sucked. Why couldn't Scott get bitten by a spider, or turn out to be a demigod, or a _vampire_?

Which only brought about an image of Scott lunging for his throat with his sharp fangs and deathly pale skin _every freaking night_ and no thank you sir. Werewolves was the way to go. Definitely.

Patting himself down, Stiles huffed in delight as he found his phone, screen cracked but still hopefully working. He unlocked it – yes! He'd have to send a thank you letter to the manufacturers – and immediately pressed speed dial one, because hey, now that his dad was totally aware of everything Stiles wouldn't have to bother with speed dial two (Scott). The call didn't even go through, an error box popping up saying to check his signal, so Stiles did and found that he _had_ no signal. Which completely explained _why_ he even had his phone in the first place. Why couldn't anything be easy in his life?

He didn't have his backpack on him, and he couldn't see it anywhere due to the darkness permeating the small room he was stuck in. It was probably still lying on the floor at school, and hopefully that meant somebody would have noticed it, and then noticed him missing, and put two and two together. Hopefully someone would've called the station, and Tom would've picked up, and on hearing it was _Stiles_ that was potentially kidnapped, he would've called his dad's cell and felt guilty about having to be the bearer of bad news and dad would hear about it and Derek would obviously hear about it and Stiles would get his ass saved.

A werewolf or two he might've been able to handle, hell, even one alpha (because Peter Hale was _still_ creepy but definitely had been handled – just not permanently), but a _pack_ of alpha's? A pack that probably knew he was awake now because breathing patterns were different when you were asleep and awake and so was the rhythm of your heart beating? What did people expect him to do here, magically create a wolfsbane weapon and charge his way out? He was _Stiles Stilinski_ , a normal teenager with no mom and a police officer dad and short attention span and a crush on the same person as when he'd been in third grade. He sucked at Lacrosse, he only got by through life because of his internet experience (because you'd be surprised how much random pieces of information you'd learn there that would suddenly pop up in real life), and the only thing he was good at was research and seeing patterns and being far too nosy for his own good. If Scott hadn't been such a good friend of his – his best friend, actually – Stiles would have long since washed his hands of _all_ of this.

At least then he wouldn't have been a constant _insert-number_ wheel. At first he was just a third wheel, with Allison monopolizing most of Scott's time, then it was _fourth_ wheel, because Derek had become part of things and Derek had more to do with Scott than Stiles, and now he was just getting pushed down and down the line and had nothing to do with anybody other than being _Scott's best friend_. Jeez, even being Robin was better than what he was right now. Cannon fodder, a soldier in a war that wasn't even his own, _collateral damage_.

He could remember noticing nobody else in the hallway with him towards economics, he remembered wondering where everybody was, why the noise level had suddenly gone quiet, and then feeling the first stirrings of being watched. He remembered seeing the red eyes that signalled an alpha, running, getting tripped over, the pain in his ankle, and then the alpha going as far as to cause _more_ pain just to (presumably) make him pass out.

But he also remembered waking up in some alley, hearing the tap tap tap of his phone when words were being typed out, and the little ding that only came on when the profile was set to 'loud' that signalled a text being sent, and he remembered thinking this was it, this was his chance, and taking it. He'd lunged at the phone in the human-shaped alpha's hands, getting it all thanks to the element of surprise, and had been able to get a text sent out before having his head bashed in against the pavement for his troubles.

So that explained the headache. And he'd actually got one up on an alpha, which was awesome. Stiles opened up his sent messages, and clicked the one right on top.

 

> _TO: Scott  
>  'heldkaslfjairtasdfkjfs'_

Oh my god, somebody kill Stiles now. _This_ was what he'd gotten his head cracked open like a watermelon for? _Key smashing_? He'd only gotten the first three letters out before getting jump tackled by a pissed off alpha. Maybe if it'd been Derek, the message might've had a possibility of inciting suspicion and wariness. Derek would've noticed the _'hel'_ and then thought of alpha's being out and about and most likely targeting Stiles and Stiles being on his own at certain points of the time _because this was something they hadn't thought off_ and put two and two together and saved Stiles' ass.

Derek would've totally gotten it, and he would've totally come to save Stiles.

"Huh," Stiles mumbled to himself, stretching out to lie down on the freezing floor of what looked to be one of those giant meat freezers. "I actually believe that."

It was a boggling revelation, that he _genuinely_ believed that Derek would come to Stiles rescue if he could, that Derek would even come without making a plan because how dare someone hurt a member of his pack. But was Stiles a member of his pack? Maybe now he was, considering he was related to one of the werewolves and not just a best friend. But then again, Derek had grown up in a pack with humans too, or Stiles figured he did since obviously Derek never spoke about his life or the Hale pack pre-fire and was incapable of actually speaking _anyway_ , so maybe Stiles was also part of the pack just like Lydia and Allison. Stiles would like that. Pack's were awesome. Insomnia inducing, but awesome. In fact, his whole life would've been awesome if he didn't run the risk of dying every single freaking day. This was what kids all over the world wished for while lying in bed. _He_ was living an enchanted life, _he_ was living ridiculously in a tv-show writer's wet dream, and because of it, Stiles Stilinski was a unique human being. Stiles Stilinski was _special_.

Stiles Stilinski was also freezing to death because _hello_ , he was stuck inside a meat fridge and these things could kill people. True fact. He'd seen it on CSI Miami.

His hands weren't tied together, neither were his feet, but then again his ankle was way beyond the capability of _usefulness_ it made sense they wouldn't bother to tie him up. That, and he was human, so double negativity in the necessity of rope. It did mean he was free to look around and try and pretend to be _doing_ something, but Stiles really didn't want to cause unnecessary pain to himself. His ankle was still throbbing like a son of a bitch, and a quick look at it – after gritting his teeth and hissing as he removed his sneaker and socks – showed that at least the cold was slowing the sluggish dispelling of blood. Clever alpha's. Whatever reason they had for not ripping his throat out probably meant they wanted to keep him alive for just a little bit longer. Why exactly was a question Stiles for once in his life refused to think on.

Sighing to himself, Stiles pawed at his phone until the video function came up, and then he made the flashlight turn on just so he could beam it around and see the freezer for himself. "Oh, gross," he complained, flinching back at the hanging carcasses of skinned animals from hooks. "With all this meat around, why do they even bother with humans?" No answer came, just like he'd expected, but then, Stiles was totally used to not having an actual voice answer him back, because he was Stiles remember? No worries, his mental voices were _tons_ more entertaining than real people anyway.

He let the beam of the light move on, shuddering violently to himself at the skinned head of a lamb staring at him with dark beady eyes, and finally saw hinges and a rectangular shape that signalled the door. It even had one of those huge metal handles, the type you could wrap your whole arm around and just bodily pull if you needed to do so.

Stiles knew he'd probably need it. Except there was no way he was going to be able to _walk_ there, anyway. Maybe he could hobble, except just the idea of hopping to there on one foot kinda made him feel sick, and what was he going to even do if the door just miraculously opened? There was no way he'd be able to escape the alpha's even if he'd been at full health, so how the hell was he going to escape them with the way he was now?

And holy cow, was he _tired_.

The clock on his phone happily told him it was five minutes to midnight, meaning he'd been out almost all day, and that it was almost Saturday. It also meant that by now someone should've noticed him missing, specifically his dad- who was not at home and actually at Derek's and _of course_ he wouldn't notice Stiles missing because he wouldn't _be_ there to _see_. But then the text he'd obviously not sent said he was going to go see dad, meaning when he didn't show up, Scott would at least wonder what was up, and hopefully so would everybody else, because no way would Stiles _not_ go see his dad unless he couldn't.

"Unless Scott never tells anybody and just googly eyes Allison and goes home, in which case, nobody will realise anything until tomorrow when I mysteriously don't show up to check up on dad." Stiles mumbled to himself, gently slamming his head against the wall behind him with a satisfying thud. "There is no way I'm staying here in radius of violent, bloodthirsty, alphas. No way. One alpha is bad enough for my health anyway."

If only his phone had enough signal for him to call for help. He'd even call Derek first, because at least then something stupid like what happened with Scott last time at the pool wouldn't happen. Any best friend that hung up on you before you could even say a word totally didn't deserve to _be_ a best friend. Stiles knew this, in fact, he was pretty sure it was an actual thing psychologist's and everybody said. Like your friends and lovers and family should treat you good, or you should cut them off. Although if anybody followed that advice, they'd be cutting people off left, right and center. Maybe he didn't need to go far, if he ever got past that door that actually looked pretty heavy duty. Maybe all he had to do was get far _enough_ to get some bars on his craptastic touch phone and before he even tried this he should _definitely_ put Derek on speed dial one for temporary usage.

Plan somehow forged from the fiery depths of desperation, Stiles tapped in Derek's number and switched it into dad's place, sending a verbal apology out to his father for the momentary betrayal. Dad would understand, he had to, because this was a matter of life and death and Stiles was the underdog here. He was so _under_ that 'dog' needed to be replaced with an animal from prehistoric times just to be accurate. Task done with minimal fuss, Stiles took a deep breath and prepared himself for the impossible mission of getting up on his feet. He was going to be clever about this, and use the wall, because walls were your friend – except when you were being thrown up against it and held in place by the superstrength of a werewolf dude who always wore really tight shirts.

Seriously, what was up with that?

"Ohhhkay," breathe, Stiles, breathe. "One, two, aaaand _up_ we go- _oooh my god_."

Apparently, it didn't even matter if he put pressure on his injured foot or not – it seemed pretty displeased by the mere notion of movement alone, never mind actually _walking_ with it. Stiles groaned a heartfelt groan, panting in breath and squeezing his eyes shut as pain radiated in crescendoing waves up his body, his heart beat spiking up and thudding painfully against his ribcage, and he didn't even need to be a werewolf to feel it. He gripped his phone tight, holding it to his chest like a safety blanket, trying to distract himself from the pain by eying the amount of space he needed to cross to get to the door. He really didn't think the door would actually open, but he _needed_ to do something, if only to appease his own sense of duty, because there was no way he was going to die here and cause unnecessary grief to his dad without having at least tried every possible solution. He owed it to dad, hell, he owed everything to dad.

Again, Stiles, breathe, just breathe. Pain is a product of the mind. Pain is the response of neurons trying to tell you to get the fuck away from whatever is causing that pain. Pain can cripple you, or it can spur you on. Come on, Stiles, come on. No pain, no gain, right? "No pain, no gain. Okay. Okay, I can do this."

He totally couldn't. But again, denial. Technically, it really wasn't a river.

Stiles babbled as he hopped, using the wall as a crutch and anything else he could grab onto. Once, he actually gripped the flank of whatever meat was hanging, literally throwing himself back and shrieking when his hand made contact with the cold flesh, and Stiles felt traumatized enough he actually started weighing the pros and cons of turning vegan. He talked about anything and everything to get his mind off of every stab of pain lighting through his leg, of the sickening feeling of bones grating against each other there, of the notion that maybe his ankle wasn't sprained and the actual injury was a lot worse than he'd originally thought. He knew he couldn't dawdle around, or give himself a moment's respite, because not only did he think he wouldn't be able to start up again if he stopped, but actually moving now would mean his blood would be pumping a bit faster, and the last thing he needed was for the quantity of blood exiting from his ankle to increase any more.

When he reached the door, he rested his forehead against it, panting as the sweat that had surprisingly accumulated on his skin started to cool down with help from the freezing temperature. "See?" He breathed out, breath puffing out in a cloud from his lips. "That wasn't so bad, was it?" It'd been excruciating, actually, and highly reminiscent of that time he'd broken his arm when learning how to ride a bike, but that wasn't something he really needed to not ponder on right now so behind the Wall of Denial it went.

Fingers wrapping around the huge handle, Stiles gave a tiny pathetic push, too drained of energy to do anymore, and cursed himself when he felt a little spark of hope inside him wither away and die when the door didn't move. Angrily, he pushed a bit harder, and wheezed a little in victory when the thick door actually went ajar before Stiles lost his energy and the mechanics inside closed it shut again. Of course a door to a meat freezer would close after itself, it was probably built that way so the cold inside the room wouldn't escape outwards, thus spoiling the meat. What Stiles needed to do was gather enough energy to open it and then squeeze himself through.

Yeah, he could do that. He could totally do that.

Hopping a step backwards and away from the door, Stiles wrapped both hands around the handle, and with a weaker than average shove pushed it out away from himself, using his weight and gravity to add more to the attempt. The door opened up silently, no frightening creek like a horror movie. But this current situation was even worse than a horror movie, because inside horror movies the one that'd be listening for a creek would normally be some totally messed in the head human (most of the times). In this case though, it was a whole bunch of dominant werewolves, and they didn't need a creek to hear Stiles. Him merely existing probably pinged up on their radar. As food, even.

Still, he needed a signal, because that was the only way he was going to survive this, so Stiles squeezed through the small gap he'd made and carefully eased the door back into being shut. The hallway he found himself in was eerily silent, one lone light source right at the end struggling to give out a yellow glow that barely reached Stiles. The floor was grey, normal work-shop-y grey, and the walls on either side of him were lined with thick heavy doors with the same thick handle that signalled meat fridges. The whole hallway was lined with them, rows after rows of doors, of freezes filled with hooks piercing bone and muscle and sinew of something that had been alive.

Nobody else was around. No glowing red eyes, no growls, not even a person flashing their sharp teeth. It was one thing to deploy physical torture – the ankle thing was pure predatory instinct to disable it's prey, that he understood – but it was a whole different ballgame when something decided to go emotional. Stiles was prey in what was obviously some sort of meat factory, and the alphas were predators that had decided to use a little mental warfare tactic for fun.

They were playing with him.

Stiles felt his heartbeat kick up another notch.

The signal on his phone was still non-existent, his battery life looked like it would only last a few more hours, so Stiles needed to preserve it for as long as he could. He dimmed the brightness to it's lowest setting, properly exited out of the tons of apps he always left running, and then held his phone up with one hand and used the wall with his other to start moving. With every hop, he squinted at his phone, begging it to work, to grab hold of some wayward satellite and hold on with a tenacity only the best of phones could have, but by the time he was just a quarter done of the hallway, there was still nothing.

Then the small hairs at the back of his neck suddenly stood to attention, a shiver ran up his spine and sent a wave of prickly fear through his body, and Stiles felt the sensation of eyes on him, on all of him - watching him. Boldly, he took another step forward with his uninjured foot, and a low growl rumbled it's way through the floor, vibrating up the one foot he had connected to the ground and up into the top of his buzzed hair. He took another step forward, eyes glued to his phone, heart jackhammering in his throat and sweat beading on his forehead, and another growl sounded, this time from behind him, imitating the one that had come from in front.

Stiles was terrified. He could feel the fear wafting off him in huge quantities of emotions, and he knew that he should keep it locked, that it would do nothing but satisfy them, but who in their right mind could control _fear_? He frantically wondered if he should just turn around and hop back to the freezer, if maybe they'd just slink away into wherever they'd come from then, if maybe they were trying to keep him in one spot for when they really wanted to play with him, but he'd already known that. He'd already known they'd put him there and kept him alive because they wanted something. Maybe they wanted to do just this, scare the crap out of him, play with their food, then kill him. Maybe they wanted him locked up and out of their way until they found the timing right so they could kill him and dump his body. Maybe they were waiting for the full moon too, for it to pass, because they were alpha's and wasn't it harder for them to keep control of themselves when the moon was close?

He knew all of this, had weighed it back in the freezer while his breath puffed out in white fog and his ankle stayed injured, and he knew he couldn't just sit there and let them. So Stiles took another step, faltered when the growl turned into a mind numbing roar, and made the mistake of actually looking up.

Red eyes lunged at him, sharp teeth snapped at him, and Stiles fell back in his haste to get away and dropped to the floor.

The fully formed wolf snapped at him again, fangs dangerously close to Stiles' neck, and a noise escaped him, a noise of pure fear as he scrambled back using his hands, pain taking the fear's place as his ankle jostled under the movement. The wolf was suddenly on it's hind legs, standing tall as its two front ones acted like long mutated arms, and Stiles shook his head side to side almost frantically as he tried moving away, just away, he didn't care where as long as it was _away_ and ended up bumping into the second wolf right behind him.

The one in front was suddenly human, no longer grotesquely formed, but his eyes were still red and his teeth were still sharp. Claws stood elongated from the tips of his fingers, yet the darkness hid his features and only allowed Stiles to correctly guess his gender. The alpha took a step forward, and Stiles could hear himself repeating, "No," over and over again, unable to stop speaking even when faced with his mortality, and the still transformed wolf behind him growled warningly to shut him up.

Stiles did. He shut his mouth completely, blinking madly to get rid of the water that had accumulated.

Except when the man in front of him raised his foot and stomped on Stiles' ankle, Stiles knew for a fact he screamed.

That was the last thing he remembered.

* * *

 

Stiles woke up back in the freezer, chin once more resting on his chest and his ankle now worryingly numb. He stayed still for what felt like hours, simply breathing, because he needed a moment to himself, just a moment, before he got his shit together.

He was scared shitless, and he really didn't think he was going to make it this time.

 _God_ , he missed his mom.

Nevertheless, after he had his moment, and a few more moments, Stiles used the wall behind him to get back up again, and checked his still thankfully alive phone for both the date and time. Four hours had passed since last time, meaning it was now four o'clock in the morning on a Saturday, and if Scott had really just gone home and nobody had told Derek and dad about the text, then it'd be a few more hours until anybody even began to suspect a thing. While it would be good if the crew realised Stiles was definitely MIA, it still didn't really mean they'd be able to save him. Wherever he was, it was somewhere with no cell reception, and that didn't bode well for Stiles.

His only hope was to either call for help, or hope somebody thought to try and track his GPS. Except only dad would be even able to guess his account's password, and that was only if dad was really good at remembering the small things from ten years ago. Stiles doubted it. It'd been years since they'd last willingly talked about mom. He didn't hold too much hope for dad thinking Stiles might even remember anything, let alone use something like that for his password.

His fingers shook against the wall, there was a lump that refused to budge in his throat, but Stiles still hopped towards the door, moaning quietly as his broken ankle throbbed uselessly beneath him. He didn't want to look, didn't want to see it, so he kept his eyes on the door and rested against it for what could've been a second or an eternity before pulling at the handle again. It took four times for him to muster up enough strength to do so, not-so-sudden fatigue weighing him down and making his limbs feel heavier than a ton of weights.

Stiles thought on how much easier this would've been if he was a werewolf. If he'd accepted Peter's bite when the offer was made. Or asked Derek sometime when the alpha was at his most amiable mood (which wasn't much, but you know). He'd rather it be Derek than Peter anyway, but that begged the question if he'd have even considered actually taking the bite if he hadn't been in a situation like this. Would he have thought about it if he'd just been relaxing at home? Maybe it was the exhaustion talking? Obviously there had to be a reason why he'd said no to Peter, right? Maybe he just needed to trust in himself and his humanity for once. The alphas could've easily taken him even if he'd been a werewolf – especially so considering they'd beaten the crap out of Erica and Boyd anyway.

Huffing as he slid through the open gap of the door, Stiles looked across the darkness of the hallway to the small light at the end of it. Every time he closed his eyes and opened it the hallway seemed to be longer, narrower, more daunting than before, but that sort of thinking made him think it might just be his subconscious going against him, making his senses go haywire on him.

He started hopping again, phone to his side, not bothering to look at it until he was closing in on where he'd been before, and this time he was prepared for the low growls that started resonating around him as soon as he hit the quarter-way mark. He didn't know exactly what they were doing, why they were doing this with him, but while his curiosity tried reasoning with knowledge gleaned from research hours, his gut genuinely didn't care. A glance at his phone showed the time ticking over to five am, the signal bars still at zero, and the growls rose up in tempo.

Red eyes started glowing from the darkness where the glow of the light didn't reach. Stiles swallowed, feeling as if just that was loud enough to be heard even with human ears, and shuddered when a puff of hot air hit his back. He took another step, reached the spot he'd been before, and held his breath, body going taut as he readied himself.

Just as he'd been expecting, the red eyes in front of him grew larger as the wolf lunged, and Stiles instantly reacted by rolling out of the way and crawling further ahead as a crash sounded behind him, the wolf hitting the one that'd been looming behind Stiles, both of them yelping in surprise at hitting each other as he crawled on all fours and made tiny noises of pain everytime his ankle hit the floor. The alphas shook themselves off quickly enough, yelps turning into growls, and Stiles jumped ahead a few paces and raised his phone to his face, eyes wide and hopeful as he stared at the screen.

_NO SIGNAL._

And the wolves descended on him.

* * *

 

He tried three more times.

His sweater was a lost cause, abandoned in the hallway, and his t-shirt was only minutely better off before he ripped it off anyway and used it to wrap around his ankle in a vain hope of slowing down the bleeding, of providing some sort of support. He felt sluggish, slow, tired, and couldn't help thinking he was forgetting something, that he'd missed something important thing and that was what was causing all this. His hands still shook, bad enough that it took him a few tries to tie off the impromptu bandage, but he finally got it done, putting his shoe back on for lack of anything else to do with it.

This would be the sixth attempt, and if nothing else, the alphas would be witness enough to say he was a stubborn son of a bitch.

It was well past noon now, somewhere in the middle of the afternoon on a Saturday, and Stiles clutched tightly to the hope that somebody had noticed him missing by now. He hoped like hell dad was verbally wondering where his son was, that Scott decided to be a good best friend and go visit dad and mention him, that the two would realise something horribly wrong had happened and get off their asses and start searching for him. He even hoped somebody babbled to Peter, told him he was missing, because Stiles had told Peter about the GPS when the Argent's had caught Derek, so Peter would know, Peter would remember.

But would Peter even care?

Stiles picked himself up for what felt like the hundredth time, panting and cradling his bruised ribs where he'd been kicked and thrown about like a ragdoll, and dragged himself to the door. He didn't flinch at the dead animals hanging around him anymore, barely gave them a look as he flexed his fingers on the cold metal of the handle, shoving it open without a care for how much noise it made. His last attempt had gotten him almost three quarters down the hallway. One of the werewolves was injured, limping slightly from a lunge that had gone wrong and ended with getting bitten by it's packmate, and Stiles prided himself for his ass kicking ways, however unintentional they might've been.

He struggled down the long hallway, wincing with every step but going strong and steady, and kept his eyes straight ahead without a care in the world as only one werewolf greeted him with an eerie howl. It sounded like devastation, the last chance, as if they'd been merely humouring him all this time and were now sick and tired of it. Stiles had hurt one of their own, and this was the last game. That was okay, because all Stiles needed to do was get further than he had last time, that's the only goal he had in mind, and with only one werewolf to contend to rather than the two and three he'd been brutalised by for the last few hours, he thought he had a chance.

The moment he hit the half way line, the werewolf jumped into action, and Stiles only dodged by tucking down and rolling out of the way. He used his momentum to jump a few more paces and landed just three or four steps away from the his last savepoint (and yes, he knew what using game-lingo said about his mental state), jostling his ribs on the landing. The hot puff of werewolf breath on the back of his neck only gave him a split second to decide what to do next, and Stiles rolled onto his back and barely missed a clawed hand denting the floor right beside his head. He reared back his one working leg and kicked out to catch the werewolf in his underbelly, grinning in vindictive satisfaction at the pained gasp and whine that answered him as the werewolf flew backwards away from him. Rolling back to his stomach, Stiles kicked off and scrambled as far as he could to the glowing light, wasting precious seconds in digging his phone out and clicking the screen on as he finally touched the three quarter line and passed it, and oh thank _god_ there was a single bar in the signal range, a single fucking bar, and the call was going out and it was ringing and suddenly the ringing stopped and it was _connected_ and–

Something cracked inside his chest as a sudden weight landed on top of him. Pain shot through his body like fire as the air inside him was forcibly pushed out.

Stiles screamed, voice cracking just in time for Derek's frantic voice to come through the tiny speakers of his phone, shouting his name, and Stiles heard himself sobbing the other man's name.

"D-Derek," god, it hurt so much. He just wanted the pain to stop, he just wanted to _breathe_ , _why couldn't he breathe_? "Derek-"

" _-Stiles! Stiles, where are you!?"_

A low growl came from in front of him, and Stiles choked back his tears as a woman sneered down at him from above, painted lips pulling up into a snarl as Derek kept screaming his name. She raised a foot, the blood red stiletto of her heels hovering over Stiles phone, intention clear as day, and panic gripped Stiles insides in a cold fury as he realised this was his last chance, this was the only thing he could do, and if he didn't answer Derek's question then this was it, Stiles was done for.

But it was so hard to breathe, the still fully formed werewolf behind him was still sitting on Stiles back, crushing his already injured ribs and worsening Stiles' lack of air.

"De... rek..." He wheezed out, watery eyes focused on the red stiletto, watching it go higher up in the air as if in slow-mo. "D-Derek," he wheezed again, desperation lending him sudden strength. "Meat factory," the alpha woman's eyes widened in surprise at his words, and Stiles carried on, letting the words trip over his tongue as he watched the foot suddenly descend down towards his phone. "Derek, meat factory. No signal, phone, Derek, _help–"_

The phone crunched into oblivion, the woman let loose an angry howl and punched the nearby light fixture, and the hallway suddenly plunged into darkness.

* * *

 

" _Derek, meat factory. No signal, phone, Derek,_ help _–"_

The call suddenly disconnected, Stiles voice disappeared, and the disconnected tone continued blaring in Derek's ear as he frantically called out the teenager's name. "Stiles? Stiles! _Fuck!_ " He punched the end call button, cutting off the continuous monotone drone of the disconnected beeps, and punched in Stiles number again from memory. Immediately, an automatic perky, irritating voice piped up, and Derek growled as he held back the urge to throw the phone into the nearest wall. He needed it to find Stiles, he needed it to find those goddamn alphas and _rip them apart_.

" _The person you are trying to call is currently not available. Please try again later."_

Pacing back and forth in front of the remains of the fireplace in his living room, Derek spun sharply to face Scott, phone creaking under the strain of his fist.

"Scott, call Jackson. See if he found anything on his route." He ordered, letting a little bit of the rage inside him loose in the flash of his eyes as he turned to Isaac. "Isaac, call Erica. See if she found anything with Peter in the forest."

Scott quickly typed in Jackson's number, remembering how a time not so distant ago Jackson was the kind of person Scott would never have on his contact list, and put the phone to his ear. Beside him, Isaac was doing the same, pressing a number that looked like speed dial to call Erica.

Derek could hear the call connecting on both their ends as he punched in Boyd's number on his own phone, pressing it to his ear and stalking to the standing Sheriff to force him back into his seat. Stiles' scream still echoed in his ears, a painful throwback to the night he'd lost his family to the fire, to his own stupid mistake, and now another of his pack was in an even worse situation _all because of him_. Half wolfed out claws dug into the Sheriff's shoulder, keeping him still as the man grew a few shades paler.

"You need to listen to me," he hissed down at the man. "We'll find him. I'll make them pay. _Listen to me_."

Mr. Stilinski had only been a werewolf for a night so far, but his biology had already accepted Derek as the alpha, and forced the older man to listen to a direct order. The tired looking man looked up, defeat etched onto every part of his face. "He wakes up at seven every Saturday and Sunday to watch the morning cartoons," the cop said quietly, speaking to himself. "Sneaks down the stairs with his blanket and has breakfast ready by the time I come down." He made eye contact with Derek, keeping it with an ease Derek had been subjected too the last time he'd been thought to be a murder suspect. "I can't lose him. I can't lose him too."

He could hear Stiles sobbing again, his scream, the wheeze to his words that only came from being winded. Could feel it echo in his head as he struggled to come up with a reply, trying to find the right words to use, words he'd never been good at. The wolf in him wanted to comfort, wanted to provide safety for his beta, but it also wanted to be _out there_ and taking care of the problem, annihilating those that had dared to tread on his territory.

"You won't." He finally settled on, infusing every piece of confidence he felt into the two words. "You won't."

The call suddenly connected, and Boyd's voice greeted him with a strained, "Derek."

Something heavy seated itself on his heart, pushing it down to his stomach at the voice, and Derek closed his eyes and inhaled deeply through his nostrils to quell the tide that swelled over him. "Boyd," he answered back, voice equally strained. He just hoped everybody took it for his normal tone. "Tell me you have something."

"It's... not good..."

" _Boyd_."

A rough inhale was his answer, and Boyd took his time with breathing the air out before answering. "I found Stiles hoodie. The one he was wearing yesterday in school. It's... ripped to shreds and bloody. Their mark is on it too. Derek, it... smells of him." _It smells so much of him_.

Derek must've made a noise because everyone was looking at him again. "Where are you?" He gritted out, forcing himself to rein back his emotions, to shove them under the box he'd always kept them in, to padlock it and keep himself  _under control_. "Is it anywhere near a meat factory?"

Boyd sounded confused but showed off his intelligence not for the first time in taking a few moments to actually think about it. "Not... really. I don't know any meat factories anyway, so I wouldn't know. I'm next to the place that had the rave that Jackson tried to kill someone in when he was a kanima."

That couldn't be it. Stiles had mentioned somewhere with no signal range – which explained why they hadn't been able to call him for hours as well as the poor quality to the one call that succeeded. "It's a ruse." He said, letting go of the Sheriff's shoulder so he could start pacing again. "They're trying to get us to focus on that area, and make us angry too. Stiles called."

A quick intake of breath came over the other end, and if Boyd had been anywhere in their radius, Derek was sure he would've heard the calm teenager's heart rate pick up. "Is he okay? Did he say he was at a meat factory?"

"Yeah," Derek answered, unwilling to mention which question he was answering to. "He said he was at a meat factory that was out of cell phone range. Get together with Erica and Peter and get here."

"And the hoodie?"

Derek glanced over at the Sheriff, the scent of grief clinging all over him, and quietly said, "That wouldn't be a good idea."

Boyd, once more with the intelligence, quickly caught on. "Yeah. Okay. I'll deal with it."

Ending the call, Derek turned around just in time to hear the Sheriff speak to Scott. "You said he took his pills during chemistry?" Derek frowned, properly turning his focus to the two as Scott nodded his head in affirmation.

"Yeah, right before the lesson started."

"And his backpack was in the hallway, meaning he doesn't have it with him." The Sheriff continued, growing more agitated as he spoke. "It's already been a whole _day_. He's missed two whole doses by now."

Isaac had the same look on his face Derek thought he himself might've had, both of them obviously not following with the conversation. "Wait," Isaac interrupted. "What pills?"

"Adderall," Scott answered promptly. "Helps him keep focused and less spazzy, I guess."

"What happens if he doesn't take his dose?" Isaac shot back, and for all the trouble the three brought him with their teenage drama and personal deep seated issues, Derek was thankful that they at least knew all the right questions to ask. "It's not bad, is it?"

Scott opened his mouth to answer, shoulders hitching up in a shrug, but it was the Sheriff that answered instead. "With the fact he's been taking it for so long, a sudden stop to it would result in extreme fatigue, insomnia, irritability, and mental depression. An overdose can cause seizures, and if bad enough, death." The police officer's voice sounded flat, monotone, as if he were reciting something from memory rather than simply answering a question, and Derek didn't doubt for a moment whoever had written the prescription for Stiles hadn't said the exact same thing.

"He can handle feeling a little _blue_ ," Derek snapped, eyes flashing red. "Where the hell are they? They should be here by now."

"Patience, patience." Peter's voice drawled from the door, his face becoming visible soon after as he stepped through. Erica and Boyd trailed after them, teeth and claw elongated, a silent testimony to how they'd travelled. Derek snarled at his uncle, the primal side of him demanding the death of the one that had killed his alpha, his sister, his everything, but human logic dictated that he still needed Peter if for nothing more than his knowledge, his _experience_. "I hear our wayward human has bested even the alphas. As expected."

"We can't wait until the full moon," Derek growled, claws now permanently replacing his nails. "We have to find them and take them out _now_."

Peter breezed into the living room, flopping down onto the lone sofa besides Mr. Stilinski, and gave a winning smile at the pale Sheriff. "Oh, you must be the new cub. My, you're a good choice. Let me be the first to say I truly appreciate Stiles. He's a diamond in the rough, in which I mean a diamond in a room surrounded by these idiots."

A car's engine roared just outside the forest, echoing like it was coming closer. The rumble indicated the porsche, meaning Jackson had arrived, and from the scent in the air of heavy perfume, Lydia was with him. Peter spread his arms over the seat, throwing a leg over the other, and relaxed back into what little remained of the cushions with a smarmy twist to his lips. Erica looked uneasy, eyes darting from Peter to Derek and back again, but she crawled hesitantly over to the alpha's side, still obviously unsure of whether or not she'd been forgiven for deciding to ditch her pack after escaping Gerard.

Derek couldn't blame her or Boyd though. If he could, he'd ditch himself too.

"So I hear Stiles bested the alphas and got a call out." Peter drawled, comfortable in his position. "Did he say anything useful? Like, _oh_ , a location?"

His feet were moving again, bringing Derek back and forth in a soothing motion that let him release some of the energy crackling under his skin. It cleared out his head, made his thoughts more easily processable, less rage and emotion and _revenge_ , because revenge would only become an option if Stiles was dead, and he wasn't. Derek just _knew_ he wasn't. "Meat factory," he finally gritted out, worrying the claw on his right thumb in between slightly sharp teeth. "He said meat factory. Somewhere with no reception, mentioned his phone – probably warning us that they were going to destroy it, which they did."

For once in a long time, Peter actually seemed surprised, smile gone from his face and eyebrows raised. "I was just joking when I asked for a location." He muttered to himself somewhat dryly. "But to think he really got that out. It certainly gives us enough to go on."

"No, it _doesn't._ " Derek hissed back, brandishing his claws like a weapon. "What do we know about _meat factories_? And ones with no cell reception?"

"Obviously that they're far out enough to be with no _cell reception_ ," came the swift reply, delivered in a smooth undertone of badly placed bemusement. "And technically they're called slaughterhouses. Not meat factories." He spared a glance to the door where Jackson came lunging through with Lydia behind him, and quirked an eyebrow at the girl in greeting before looking back to Derek. "A map would be a good start. One of Beacon Hills and probably the surrounding area."

The Sheriff pushed himself up from his seat, and held up a hand to quickly stop Derek from ordering him back down. He still swayed a little – the full moon was only two days away, and he hadn't had nearly enough time for his body to grow accustomed to the change – but he stayed standing. "I've got one in my cruiser. I'll go get it."

Sensing the stubbornness wafting off the man and the need to be helpful, Derek took a step back and gave Jackson a look. "Go with him."

The two left, Lydia watching after them before she folded her arms across her chest and glared at the rest. "I hope you have a plan for that map, because there's not nearly enough people here to go searching in a grid format quickly enough." She had a point, and as if knowing it, she cocked her head to the side and gave a smug smirk. "Good thing you have me."

* * *

 

"There's nine districts of warehouses that may or may not include slaughterhouses, here, here, here, and everywhere else marked with a red X. Each one is big enough that it'd take some time for even one of you to search, so you'll have to go in two."

"It'll take too long." Derek frowned, glowering down at the spread out map and the nine regions highlighted in red. "Can't you find out which ones have a slaughterhouse?"

Lydia glared at him for questioning her expertise. "No, actually, I _can't_." She replied scathingly, flipping her hair over a shoulder with a hand. "Technically, there's thirty six possibilities in Beacon Hills alone, way more if you look at the surrounding areas, but out of all of them, I narrowed it down to just _nine_. Hopefully you'll be able to _sniff_ Stiles out."

The Sheriff leaned over the map and studied the marked areas. "I can get cruisers out on the ones we're not on, have them search around for Stiles."

"No." Derek shot back immediately. "No cops. No humans." And because he could see Stiles' dad gearing up to angrily argue, he added on, "The alpha's would kill them before they even got close." It was the truth, and Derek could see the Sheriff mull it over before accepting it as sound logic, so he turned his focus back to the map and calculated what exactly to do. "Alright," he finally said. "We'll go in two's, everybody pairs up with someone and takes a district."

Isaac's hand shot up like a little boy willing to answer a maths question. Derek stared at the young teenager until Isaac realised what he was doing and haltingly took his hand down. "U-Um, there's eight of us...? If we go in two's that'll mean only four districts will get searched. If they catch whiff of us, they'll have enough time to relocate."

That was a good point, but Derek couldn't let anybody go on their own, especially not the teens. It was because of it Stiles had been grabbed, because he'd been alone, even for just a small moment, and now he was somewhere by himself hurt and injured. Growling, Derek shook his head and tapped a finger against the centre of the map. "Fine. You and Jackson pick one, Boyd and Scott take another, and Erica, you're on your own."

"Not that I don't appreciate the flattery," Erica drawled, looking curious despite herself. "But why me?"

"Because you're on your period." Derek said flatly. "You'll be fine on your own."

Lydia looked insulted, probably thinking Derek was being sexist or something equally mundane, but by the winces coming from Isaac and Boyd, they certainly knew what Derek was talking about. Erica just smirked, the twist of her painted lips severe enough to transform some of the devastation on the Sheriff's face into a quirked eyebrow, while Peter had a similar expression on his face to Erica's, along with a hint of something Derek refused to acknowledge as pride.

"Peter, you're completely healed now, aren't you?" At Peter's nod, Derek flashed his sharp teeth threateningly at his uncle. "Then you'll go on your own too. Try not to die."

"That'll leave you and Mr. Stilinski," Scott pointed out, seeming to not have picked up on the tension running between Derek and Peter. "Are you guys going together or apart?"

"Together." Derek said, just as the Sheriff said, "Apart."

Derek glared at the older man.

"Together," he repeated himself, a low thrum of a growl beneath his words. "Because you're still new to this and haven't had your first shift. Don't make me change my mind and keep you here."

Stilinski glared back at him then averted his eyes, silently giving in. The alpha inside Derek preened at the submission, at the silent confirmation that Stilinski was now definitely part of his pack, but Derek still knew he'd have to make up for this, get the Sheriff properly onto his side willingly rather than by force.

Lydia popped a gum into her mouth, her heart thumping a steady beat of the truly calm, and she chewed it as she clapped her hands together. "That still leaves four more districts. Four more that are big enough to hide in easily. What do we do?"

Everybody turned to look at him then, adhering to his position as the alpha, waiting for him to declare he had the perfect plan and had it all covered, and Derek felt each stare like an extra weight on his shoulders he'd never asked for. All he'd wanted was to find Laura and get the hell out of town again, and when he'd found her dead all he'd wanted was to find her killer and kill him. He hadn't asked to become the de facto leader of five teenagers, his uncle (who'd also killed his sister), and now the Sheriff of Beacon Hills. If he was honest to himself, the Hale pack also included Lydia and Stiles, definitely the latter, and only recently the former. Derek still didn't know what to make of Allison, though. But for what he had in mind, he'd need her.

He'd definitely need her.

"We call the Argent's."

* * *

 

Stilinski chose the eighth district.

He just shrugged and said that while he wasn't superstitious, there had to be a reason why the Chinese liked it so much. Peter stared at Stilinski and made a comment about how he could see where Stiles got some of his 'Stilesness' from, and Derek felt the need to yank the man's throat out with his bare claws, except Lydia got there first with a painful looking elbow jab to Peter's kidney.

Isaac and Jackson both decided on district three, while Boyd strong armed Scott into taking one (Boyd's no nonsense personality would help keep Scott's recklessness under tabs, or at least, that's what Derek hoped for), and Erica decided to be the middle and take two. Peter shrugged and let Lydia choose four for him, which left districts five, six, seven and nine to the hunters.

"Let me and Scott go," Stilinski suggested, wiping away some of the blood from yesterday's near-death experience off his elbow. "Scott's dating his daughter, right? And I'm the Sheriff, who, for all they know, is still human. Plus it's my boy that's missing."

It would certainly make sure that Chris at least took the time to hear them out, but Derek still didn't feel alright with letting any of his pack anywhere near enemy territory on their own. "Fine. But I'm driving you. You two can handle it, but if anything happens..." He let himself trail off, because he personally thought it was obvious what he was going to do if anything happened. He'd go in there and single handedly kill every single one of them if they even so much as laid a hand on one of his again.

Peter rolled his eyes, but Scott seemed reassured by the thinly veiled promise, and the Sheriff only frowned a bit in what Derek presumed to be his automatic response to someone's willingness to commit a crime. Still, the new werewolf didn't complain, which only hinted at how far he'd go himself for his son. Derek approved wholeheartedly of that loyalty, the pack could use some of it.

He pushed himself off the table they'd all been huddled around, and went to the hanger in the corner to retrieve his jacket and keys. Behind him, the quiet murmurs of his pack mixed together into soft conversation, Erica making snide but playful comments about the boys teaming up together while she went out into the big bad world all on her lonesome self, and Lydia's exasperation at all of them adding enough noise to keep him afloat from his own thoughts.

"You know what?" She demanded loudly, interrupting everybody's conversation. "I'm coming with. You'd probably just growl at each other and mess everything up."

Derek stared at her blankly, wondering for a moment if she was necessary or not to the upcoming talk with Chris Argent. Scott on his own was a disaster waiting to happen, but he'd thought the Sheriff could be the voice of reason and someone the Argent's would listen too, but with the way the older man looked and how thin a thread he was walking on, maybe Lydia had a point. In the end, he huffed quietly to himself, chagrined at the constant modifications to the plans, and strode out of the house to his car without a word.

He'd punish her by putting her in the back with Scott.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In my head, the three hunters mentioned in this story are; Rufus Turner, Bobby Singer, and John freakin' Winchester, baby. Because _d'uh_. Sorry if it's late, and if it's not, then great. I've lost track of time and don't know what day it even is. Mention of cancer + Mama Stilinski + one-time drug use, but only quickly - just in case some people have issues with that. Tried to come up with something more creative but didn't know whether I mentioned it before in the story or not.
> 
> Also, _Johnny Cage_. That is all.

All Chris had to offer was three other hunters, along with himself and his daughter. That was five hunters altogether, and apparently, one of them was good enough to handle a district by himself. Derek bared his fangs at the glowering man's stare, feeling himself itching to take him out, but he relaxed minutely when the other two men loudly told the loner to knock it off. Apparently, the four men knew each other well – the three Chris had brought weren't Argent's, and had come from out of state for the whole Gerard business and nothing more (Derek couldn't detect a lie, but this was Chris so the possibility couldn't be thrown out) – and most of all, each one (save for Allison) had experience enough that Derek didn't predict a bloodbath if they came face to face with the alphas.

But if they did and a bloodbath _did_ happen, it was no skin of Derek's back.

Scott left immediately to go meet up with Boyd at their assigned district. Erica, Isaac and Jackson had already gone off to theirs, and Peter had also disappeared off to his own part of the map. The hunters spilled into SUVs, the lone man with the dark gaze climbing into a monster truck that stank of rock salt and wolfsbane, and Jackson drove himself and Lydia back home. Derek climbed into his Camarro, the Sheriff already in shotgun, and floored it to the highway that would lead to the eighth district, and thought it said something about his life that he was willingly speeding with the Sheriff in the passenger seat.

"John," said the Sheriff, speaking up for the first time since he'd told the Argent's of his missing son. "My name's John Stilinski. I don't think I introduced myself properly last time. Pretty sure all I said was 'I'm the Sheriff, and you're under arrest.'"

Derek's lips twitched, remembering how Stiles had climbed in and tried interrogating him while he was handcuffed only a few minutes later. He nodded his head anyway, accepting the Sheriff's – _John's_ – introduction, and turned the right corner that heralded another long highway. "How long?"

John looked down at the map, squinting as the sun outside began it's descent towards the horizon, and gestured to the next turn up ahead. "Turn here, and we should start seeing the warehouses." Following suit, Derek turned at the corner, and felt his focus kick up a few notches as the warehouses loomed into sight. "Park anywhere," the Sheriff suggested. "It won't do us much good anyway since we'll have to search each one on foot. Nobody will see anyway – this place is up for demolition in a week."

Killing the engine, Derek pocketed his keys as he climbed out of the car, standing still for a second to sniff the air. On the other side of the car, the Sheriff waved his phone about, frowning at it, but shook his head at Derek in an answer. No signal. Derek couldn't smell anything besides the stale air.

Still, the lack of cell reception alone was good enough to go on.

"I want to say that we should split up, I _want_ us to split up, but I know that's just my emotions getting the better of me." John scowled, wiping a hand across his face wearily. "It's just... _Stiles_. He shouldn't have to _be_ in this mess."

Derek agreed completely, and he knew without a doubt it was his fault this had happened.

"But then again..." John continued with a sigh. "Knowing what I know now, it makes sense. I always knew his curiosity would get him in trouble."

Wait, what? Derek stared at the man, frowning heavily, and shook his head slowly. "His curiosity did not get him in this trouble." He said, enunciating each word carefully, just in case the Sheriff was nearing a mental breakdown. He had to be, because Derek did _not_ just hear the man lay the blame on his _missing son's shoulder_ , did he? "It's _because_ of his curiosity that Scott is even _alive_." As well as Derek, and definitely Lydia. Derek had been all but ready to kill the strawberry blonde haired girl, especially since every possible evidence pointed to her being the kanima.

But the Sheriff shook his head, almost fondly, as they scouted out another warehouse that lacked any sort of indication that it might be used for meat. "It's because of him dragging Scott out into the forest that Scott even got bitten in the first place. I should've known he wouldn't stay home, especially considering the fact it was a murder."

Wincing – because that had been Laura, and Scott had seen the top half of her body before getting bitten – Derek led the way to another warehouse, one with a promising scent of blood in it. He didn't know what to say in reply to the Sheriff's words, because he'd always just thought it was teenagers being teenagers, getting excited by something new happening in their usually uneventful city. He'd always thought of it, whenever he did, as something that had been half luck and half sheer idiocy. Peter spent at least two hours a day waxing poetic about how he could have bitten Stiles instead, and damn him for sinking his claws in Scott.

Stiles could have ended up with the bite, could have ended up being the beta. For one thing, Derek figured Stiles would've been smart enough to immediately ditch the girl he was dating when he found out she was a _hunter_ , that, and probably not wolf out in the middle of a lacrosse field. He certainly wouldn't have had to come up with an excuse for every bruise and scrape he came home with to his father, because Derek knew the teen hated lying to his dad.

But in retrospect, he didn't think Scott would've been as helpful as a human as Stiles was.

The warehouse turned out to be another bust, the blood he'd smelled being nothing but weeks old animal blood, probably moved to a newer section of town that wasn't going to be demolished for new infrastructure. Derek growled in irritation, patience getting short, as he stalked out of the warehouse and kicked at a nearby can, launching it up to the air. It sailed high up into the sky, coasted for a while with a fluffy white cloud, then descended with startling speed until it landed with an explosion.

An explosion coming from where he'd parked his car.

"What the-" the Sheriff hissed, slapping his hands against his ears to block out the reverberating echoes. Derek grabbed him by the bicep, shoving and pulling him behind the door of the warehouse they'd just left, gritting his teeth together as the flames crackled and let out round plumes of black smoke. He could smell the sharp, fiery, tang of metal burning, could smell underneath that the leather of his seats melting, and punched the door in a fit of rage, denting the metal and scraping it with his claws.

That was Laura's car, the car she'd bought him when they'd left, the car she'd left him with when she'd come back for Beacon Hills because it guzzled gas like nobody's business. That was the last thing he had of hers. And it was burning up in a smoking haze right there in front of him.

"It must be them," John said, voice still a pained hiss as he squeezed his eyes shut and kept his hands clamped to his ears. "Decided to get rid of our car, meaning we're trapped."

"If they're here, then so is Stiles." Derek growled, confidence overtaking his rage. He'd use the anger he had for losing his car and focus it, make damn sure that he didn't lose it in vain. "Make the call. Get the hunters here first. Then Erica. I wasn't joking about her taking care of herself. Right now, she'd be enough to take on two alpha's on her own, as long as neither of them aren't female."

The Sheriff went pale, muttering about being glad Stiles was a boy under his breath, but took out the satellite phone from his belt and started dialing the number. He'd made Jackson swipe enough for everybody from the station, meaning no matter how far they went they'd still be able to keep in communication, just in case one ran into the alphas like Derek and John had. "Hello? Chris? Yeah, it's the Sheriff." Interesting that he'd used his title and not his name. "We found them. Call your buddies and get them to district nine... Yeah... Sure, we will. I'll see you then." John glanced up at Derek as he typed in Erica's number. "Chris says don't die. Something about not wanting to deal with a pack without it's alpha."

Derek punched the door again, denting it further, and tried to hold the urge he felt to find Chris Argent and kill him. "Whatever," he gritted out, teeth grinding together almost painfully. "I'm going to go distract them. Go behind them and see if you can find Stiles. Call the other betas as soon as you're clear."

The Sheriff nodded, eyes going hooded as Erica's voice came from the phone's speakers with a pissed greeting. John talked to her in hush words as he turned around and went behind the warehouse, disappearing from view, and Derek stepped out of the door into the fray, squaring his shoulders as two people stood with their backs to his burning Camarro. If Erica was really as pissed as she sounded, then she was hopefully aching for a fight, itching with the prospect of letting loose on some bad guys. She'd get here in a few minutes, five tops, and she'd be angry. Oh, she'd be _angry_.

Derek could remember how Laura got around her 'time of the month', and even more he remembered how his father would usher him and most of _everybody_ out of the house whenever his mother was growing cranky. Female werewolves were frightening. He'd have to hold out for just five minutes.

Thankfully, neither of the two standing in front of him were female. Both stood loosely, one slender and lithe while the other of average build and height, but their lips were pulled into a sneer and their claws already extended. Derek let his eyes flash red, saw theirs mirror his, and decided to take a page out of Stiles' book. Also known as running your mouth to piss off the opponent in the vain hope they'd mess up and you could use the chance to rip them apart. Or, as Derek hoped in Stiles' case, run your mouth until you were either a) saved, or b) had the chance to run the hell away.

"What? Only two?" He sneered, letting his voice drip with disdain. "Should I be flattered? Guess you're saving me the energy of hunting you down, so maybe I should give my thanks instead." Derek took note when the lithe one angrily took a step forward, held back only by a small growl from the larger one, and huffed to himself in genuine surprise that his tactic was even working. So he kept talking, and talking, and talking, even when the two alpha's wolfed out and grew angrier. "Look at that," he hissed, flashing his own fangs at them threateningly. "You both look like rejects from _Thriller_. Ugliest werewolves I've seen. And I was born one, so I should know."

The lithe werewolf was the one to finally snap, shoving off his packmate's hold and lunging at Derek. Derek easily sidestepped him, noticing the speed the other moved with, and struck with a clawed hand. It didn't connect – he hadn't expected it too – but Derek used the opportunity to inhale deeply through his nose while the other was close, and leaped away when a foot came swinging for his head. Lithe and Slender didn't smell like Stiles, but he definitely smelled like the inside of a butcher shop.

" _Derek, meat factory. No signal, phone, Derek,_ help _–"_

The Sheriff had probably called the betas by now, the hunters would get here the quickest save for probably Erica, but Derek still threw his head back and howled, letting his wolves know this was the place, they were here, and some form of justice was due.

"Dammit," the werewolf still standing still in front of Derek's burning car cursed. "Alex's gonna be pissed. Hurry up, Jay, get rid of him."

"Sorry boys," Erica's voice carried through the air, the vicious growl of her wolf underlying her words. "Too late."

Derek took a hasty step back as Erica suddenly came bursting through the fire still billowing from his ruined car, and took the distraction to lunge at the one named Jay and fall with him to the ground. They grappled, Erica's snarls and the unnamed werewolves' answering growls soundtrack to them from behind, and Derek just got a glancing blow of Jay's face when the engines of two SUV's and a monster truck roared onto the scene and suddenly cut off. Derek didn't waste a second in suddenly abandoning the fight, wrapping his arms around Erica's waist and dragging her away from the open space just as the rapport of guns rang out, and the alpha werewolves yelped in surprise.

The stank of wolfsbane assaulted his nose, and as Erica whimpered and curled into herself protectively, Derek hustled them both away from the sounds of fighting, dimly hoping to be lucky enough to have both sides get rid of each other. Behind the warehouse they'd ducked behind off was a small gangway in between another warehouse, and Derek struggled to push the female werewolf through the space and usher her ahead. The smell of burning rubber and metal still heavily assaulted his senses, the wolfsbane not helping matters in the slightest, so it would be impossible for him to scent out the Sheriff or any of his betas – or even better yet, Stiles.

"Come on, Erica." He muttered under his breath, trying to bring her out of her violent induced haze. They were cutting it close as it was, keeping her unrestrained with the full moon only a day away. By now Derek would've had her on lock down already, especially since the sun had set down and the sky was quickly turning a dark shade of blue. Just as they were nearing the end of the gangway, Scott shouted his name (had the kid never heard of _stealth_?) and frantically waved him to hurry up. Derek pushed through after Erica, dropping her into Isaac's confused hands (he could deal with her – mostly), and looked around for the rest of his pack, following Scott's lead into a nearby warehouse that reeked like a meat market.

It was to the Sheriff puking in a blood soaked hallway that Derek came to a stop, Jackson's hackles raised as he growled quietly obviously having returned at some point, and Boyd rubbing the Sheriff's back as the man kept vomiting. Peter stood next to the remains of a broken light bulb, their heightened eye sight illuminating the streaks of blood on the floor, the long, narrow, length of the hallway, and the doors lining on each side.

"Meat fridges," Peter explained, nodding his head towards the doors. "I'm pretty sure this is where Stiles was held when he called."

Derek growled, shouldering past Peter towards the first door, and yanked it open to see nothing but an empty fridge. Gesturing at the other doors, Derek ordered everybody to start searching, because Stiles was here, Stiles _had to be_ , because with every inhale through his nose Derek could smell him. The werewolves fanned out, quickly adhering to his command, and even the Sheriff struggled to keep his stomach settled to help in the search for his son. Derek stalked forward, trying another door, slamming it shut, going for the other, making sure they didn't miss a door, wondering dimly why the previous owners hadn't taken their meat with them. The answer came to him when he opened his sixth door – and _oh_ , whatever happened in this room must have been the reason why the whole business district was being condemned. Mass murder never did make good business.

Shutting the door, Derek took a pointed step back and turned his attention to the remaining length of the hallway. Past the halfway point and Stiles' scent grew stronger, interrupted only with the faint smell of other werewolves, other _foreign_ werewolves, causing his hackles to rise and his wolf to bare teeth. Derek let some of the built up tension loose by letting his nails grow to claws, letting his eyes flash red as he stalked to the end of the hallway where the last door stood by it's lonesome self.

Past the door was blood.

Yet no Stiles.

Frustrated beyond belief, Derek shoved the hanging forms of meat away from him as he followed where the scent was the strongest, where the blood had pooled into a small circle that showed Stiles had at least been stationary here for a while. The blood was cold and barely liquid thanks to the freezing temperature, unhelpful to giving him a time frame to figure out how long ago Stiles had been here. Derek stood up from his crouch and left the fridge, gnawing at a clawed finger as he pushed past the pack without paying them any heed. He left them to the last fridge, let them come to their own conclusion, instead navigating the empty warehouse till he exited it and came out to the night sky.

His wrist watch brightly proclaimed it one in the morning.

Only a few more hours till the full moon.

That's when Derek heard it, the sound of an engine revving somewhere... behind the warehouse? And the scent was suddenly stronger – werewolves, two of them, and not the two Derek had already met – and _Stiles_?

Derek tore after the smell, confident the others would hear the car (a van, maybe?) and catch the scent as he rounded the corner, finding himself right next to his destroyed Camarro. The minivan – just as he'd thought – vibrated as the engine was revved hard again, the back doors wide open showing an empty inside with nothing but a person slumped over. A person staring back at him with wide brown eyes and a buzz cut and a mouth opening up to form his name–

–" _Derek."_

His control broke, and before he knew it Derek was in full alpha form and racing after the van just as the wheels started turning. He could hear his betas right behind him, the sound of them catching on to what was happening, Scott's growl and the Sheriff giving a chilling howl of promised retribution, but the only point Derek could focus on was the open back of the van and the pale teen in it, along with his need to get Stiles the hell out of there and back to the safety of the pack.

A woman was suddenly crouched next to Stiles, a strange mask covering her nose and mouth as she pointed a nozzle towards them, and before Derek knew it a burst of purple haze erupted and cloaked them all. The burning sensation of wolfsbane settling in his lungs made him wince, but the woman was gone, the van was already moving, Stiles was _disappearing_ , and Derek ignored the burn in his lungs, Derek pushed through the haze of purple with nothing but an ordered snap to his whining betas to get themselves out of the mist, and used his momentum to launch across the divide and crash into the van just as the doors automatically closed shut.

Derek shook, trying to dispel the irritant coating his skin. Distantly, he could hear Stiles' voice, the lilt sounding worried, his name being repeated over and over again, and this time, Derek shook for a different reason. He could hear Stiles' voice again as the van lurched around a corner, crackly and weak over the phone, begging him to help, the scream that had turned his blood cold, and a whine broke from his throat unbidden as his vision swam. He was human again, the wolfsbane forcing him to shift back, surprisingly pressed up against Stiles, the teenager's arms holding him close and still as the van shook and quaked, and Derek definitely heard Stiles mutter, "Oh my god, you stupid idiot."

A glance up showed just how pale Stiles was, exhaustion and hurt wafting off him in waves. Derek growled, anger flaring up at the rough treatment _his_ Stiles had gotten, and buried his head in Stiles neck to better hear his pulse – erratic and not so stable, but still there, _still there_. Derek growled again, the low vibration a silent promise from his wolf for revenge, and beside him, Stiles shivered from the cold, or from the promise, or from any of the numerous reasons he had to shiver.

And the van drove on.

* * *

Stiles blearily opened his eyes to a wooden ceiling, disorientation clouding his memory for a few precious seconds before everything came crashing down. He gasped awake, remembering dad getting attacked, dad getting bitten, the plan, getting jumped in school, the meat fridge, the alphas, his destroyed phone, Derek, and-

-wait. _Derek._

Derek had been there, Stiles was certain of it. He'd _seen_ Derek right at that last second when the damn woman had thrown him into the back of a van, and Derek had gone ballistic and shifted completely and ran through what Stiles suspected to be wolfsbane and he'd _succeeded_. But where was he now? Where was Derek? _Please, for god's sake, don't let it have been an hallucination_.

"-alm down, Stiles. Breathe. _Stiles_."

_Derek?_

A small fissure of pain sparked through his nerves, waking him completely up, and Stiles winced when his neck protested his sleeping arrangement as he peered away from the ceiling to look around. Derek was crouched by his ankle, eyes that looked dark from afar but were actually a light mixture between blue and green watching him as Stiles blinked what little remained of his sleep away from his eyes. "Thank god, you're not an hallucination."

Derek frowned, eying him for all he was worth. "Does your head hurt? Do you have a concussion?"

Yeah, like he'd know what a concussion felt like. Sure, Stiles was the king of hurting himself without external aid, but even he didn't bang himself up too hard to cause _concussions_. Usually he just stubbed his toe or closed the drawers on his fingers or accidentally sliced them with a cooking knife. Usually he just accidentally banged his elbows into places and smacked into closed doors (specifically the all-glass ones, which were just unnatural, by the way) and tripped on the stairs. Concussions though? No, not so much. "Dude," Stiles frowned in reply. "How would I know? I'm the sheriff's kid, not the nurse's. Although that wouldn't actually be correct in this example because Scott is a nurse's kid and he probably doesn't know anything about concussions as well. But then again, that's just Scott, so maybe my example is still perfectly legitimate."

All Derek did in reply to his answer was huff, shaking his head to himself as he turned his attention back to Stiles foot. What was so important about his foot anyway? It was just his ankle, where the alpha had... Oh right. Where the alpha had totally tore the flesh and everything out and it was gruesome (and maybe he was completely exaggerating here because when he'd bravely taken a peek it hadn't looked _that_ bad) and Stiles had not been kind to it anyway due to extenuating circumstances so it was probably really, really, bad (or really just fine and totally healed but just sprained) and Stiles did _so_ not want Derek to touch it (no, really, even if it was fine and dandy and absolutely peachy he did _not_ want Derek to touch it, ew).

"So yeah, about that," he started, trying to insert as much confidence as he could into his face. "There's totally no reason to check that out because it's totally fine."

A growl. "I have to see how bad it is."

"No, really, it's completely-"

Stiles cried out breathlessly in pain, squeezing his eyes shut as tears came unbidden at Derek's soft touch. He gulped in air, cursing Derek to hell and doggy-hell and everything else in between, the words coming out of his mouth devoid of any voice because he couldn't add any actual breath to it because it hurt too much and breathing was a foreign concept that he could just not get on board with and what was air and why was it so important goddammit and-

-"Jesus," Derek's voice interrupted him, breathless for it's own reasons. "I'm sorry. Stiles, I'm sorry."

Stiles didn't know for sure, but he was certain he'd heard Derek make a wounded noise that was all werewolf with not even an ounce of human. Forcing himself to open up his eyes, he glared down at his ankle and it's traitorous ways, because it was supposed to be _fine_ and completely _nothing_ and just a scratch dammit, glowering for all he was worth at the pathetic bandage he'd tried wrapping around it from his ruined shirt, and oh that reminded him he was totally shirtless and there was this horrible bruising around his ribs from where he'd ungracefully crash landed a few times into walls and stuff. A warm palm was placed right above his ankle, and Derek's eyebrows furrowed together in concentration, and for a while Stiles watched in confusion as black veins started appearing around Derek's hand, the veins traveling upwards from his wrist in a really creepy way that just looked Peter-Burning-Alive level of disturbing.

"What're you doin'?" Stiles frowned, staring down at Derek's arm as if it had done him the greatest of offense. "What the hell is that? Dude, are you like, sucking the evil out of me?" He'd been joking, because for one there _was_ no evil _in_ him (he was cupcakes and sunshine and everything good in this world, thank you very much), but Derek looked at him like Stiles should know what he was doing and why was Stiles asking stupid questions again? "Wait, no, seriously, Derek," he pressed, pushing Derek's arm off his leg to stop whatever weird stuff was happening, and hey look, he couldn't feel as much pain as before, and was Derek _wincing_? "Dude! You're sucking the pain _into_ yourself! Not cool, man! You need to stay the top of your game because you're our only chance here!"

Derek shook his head, batting Stiles' hand away to return it firmly onto Stiles' ankle. "The pack'll come. They'll be here soon."

"It doesn't matter if they come or not," Stiles angrily retorted, harshly slapping at Derek's hand. He gritted his teeth and tried to move his leg towards himself. "You need to stay strong because the full moon is tomorrow and we don't know what the hell they're planning, Derek!"

Derek looked stunned at the outburst, hands still mid-air, aborted from when he'd jerked to try and stop Stiles from moving his leg. The expression quickly turned confused as Derek stared at Stiles thoughtfully before saying, "Stiles... It's 5 AM on a Sunday. The full moon is tonight. We've been here for five hours."

Cursing, Stiles let his head fall back onto the wood behind him with a dull thud. "That must be why they didn't kill me," he realized, finally having something of an answer for what he'd been questioning. "They're planning something, and it has to do with the full moon."

A growl came from Derek as the alpha glared at him. "Nobody's going to kill you."

Frowning, Stiles bit his tongue to keep back the comment of his low mortality rate thanks to the company he kept, and instead took in the new information of what day it was and tried to figure it out. "So I thought they were here to get _rid_ of the pack, which would mean a simple attack and kill," he mused, letting his thoughts run out of his mouth for best thinking capacity. "But maybe they don't really care for the pack but the _alpha_ , which would explain why they haven't killed you yet and why they kept me alive. Maybe that's how they get new members? What if they wanted to _recruit_ you into their pack and this was some huge werewolf-y ritual like Peter did in how he used the power of the moon – oh god, did I really just make a Sailor Moon reference? – and it makes your alphaness transfer to their pack without you losing it and just becoming a beta because they're a pack of alphas." He frowned, a cut on his lip stinging as his expression tugged on it. "It would explain why they didn't kill dad too, because they totally could have if it was Erica and Boyd that came to the rescue. What if a human connected to the pack – even just by a really thin margin like dad – was necessary for the ritual?"

That meant his death was going to be a huge factor in it, along with the moon and everything, but he didn't have much evidence to support anything he was saying. It could all completely be wrong – the hypothesis of a teenage kid who'd read too many wikipedia articles and had a wild imagination and lived a life where _anything_ was possible except vampires (apparently, and how unfair was that, mother nature?) wasn't exactly reliable. "What do you think?" He finally asked Derek, blinking him back into focus.

Shaking his head, Derek said, "I've never actually heard of anything like that, but I wouldn't be surprised. Alpha packs have their own structure and are rare. Anybody that ever runs into one usually ends up dead, so not much is known. I wouldn't know how they recruit, even if..." He looked away, eyes skittering towards an empty fireplace where charred remains of wood were still inside.

Stiles didn't need to hear the rest of the sentence. It was obvious; _even if the fire had never happened_. But he was a master of awesomeness anyway, so he completely jumped over the many questions he had about _that_ part of Derek's life and asked, "How many rituals are there anyway with the full moon?"

There was a worrying pause before Derek answered. "... Too many to count."

And seriously, was that just not their luck? Stiles banged his head against the wall again, this time harder, reveling the moment of pain that blanked out every other cluttered thought in his head. Yeah, he didn't like pain – and he certainly didn't like inflicting it on himself or others – but sometimes, it was useful. "Ow," he heard himself say, because his brain to mouth filter was a foreign concept that did not exist, remember?

"Stop hurting yourself, it's a miracle you don't have a concussion yet." Derek growled angrily, expression somewhere between incredulousness and concern ("how can you be so stupid to hurt yourself right now?"). The alpha shuffled around, being careful of Stiles' injured ankle, and collapsed against the wall next to Stiles, shoulder to shoulder. He moved slow, despite no signs of injury on him, like an old grandma struggling to cross the street. Suddenly remembering the burst of wolfsbane Derek had been hit with, Stiles asked how he was feeling, and immediately got the answer of, "Fine."

"No seriously," Stiles pressed, rolling his eyes despite the dull ache in his head warning of an incoming headache. "How are you? And the truth, this time."

Derek sighed in obvious frustration, but Stiles could easily see the grudging acceptance that Stiles could read through his shitty werewolf excuse of a lie. "The wolfsbane was minuscule, it won't affect me for much longer. I just need some time to heal."

"Oh, yeah, totally," Stiles drawled in reply. "Take all the time you need. Got nothing else to do but hang out. In this wooden cabin. In the middle of nowhere." Derek didn't respond, so Stiles carried on. "You said it's Sunday? Dude, that means it's been three days already, no wonder why I'm starving. I don't suppose you have Skittles on you or anything, yeah? Man, this is depressing."

Derek's expression went hard, and Stiles wondered for a moment if Derek could hear the little gurgle his stomach made right then, begging to be fed. He was lucky in the sense that he'd been unconscious for a lot of the past three days, but every time he woke up in that fridge it had been to hunger pains. Now they'd tapered off into a weird empty feeling in his stomach that felt a bit too much like nausea. "Stiles, when was the last time you took your pills?"

"What pills?" He asked, genuine confusion on his face.

"Adderall."

Huh. Well, it probably wasn't too hard to know who was on medication or not. Being ADHD was like being asthmatic. Although it wasn't, because both sucked worse than anybody could imagine. Also, werewolves. "Um... Chemistry, I think? It's the slow release kind anyway, lasts longer, so I've only been clean for two days. Saturday and today. Huh, _clean_. Makes me sound like a junkie." Derek's face looked weird, his eyebrows were raised and there was a small furrow in the skin between them. "Dude, calm down," Stiles was quick to say, voice reassuring as he mistook Derek's expression for suspicion. "I've never used. Dad's a sheriff, remember? Although there was that one time in sixth grade... uh... dude, never mind."

"Don't call me dude." Why was Stiles not surprised at the response? "And I'm telling your dad you did drugs in sixth grade."

Irritation flared hot and strong, making his words bite as he glared at Derek. "And make him worry about something that happened ages ago and won't happen again? Screw you, Derek, you don't know a damn thing about me!"

Derek winced at the volume, snarling as he shook his head. "There's a reason why they're illegal," he said, gritting his teeth together in an attempt to keep control. "You should've never done it. There's no reason good enough to do it."

"There's tons of reasons good enough to do it!" Stiles answered loudly, angrily shoving at Derek's shoulder.

"Like what?"

"Like my mom _dying_!"

Derek sucked air in through his teeth, eyes widening just an inch that for him meant looking like a deer in headlights. Still angry, Stiles slumped into himself and rubbed a hand at his face, trying to get rid of the sudden burn behind his eyes. He was not going to cry, he was _not_ , no matter how unstable he felt right now. The last thing he needed after the shit fest that was the last three days was to think of his mom again, or the two years and three months she spent bedridden first at home, then at the hospital.

"Cancer...?" Derek finally said, voice low and soft, the timbre of his vocals sounding foreign to Stiles' ears.

He nodded, suddenly feeling exhausted, and distantly realized the word 'unstable' might be an understatement. He'd missed his doses before, had gone whole weeks without them, especially a year ago when he'd experimented to see if they were actually helping or not. Usually he was able to keep control of himself for at least two weeks before focusing on anything became practically impossible, or everything seemed unbelievably boring, or he found himself saying things he normally wouldn't. He might not have a brain to mouth filter, but he'd been raised to be polite, and he'd never intentionally hurt someone's feelings for no reason. But he hadn't eaten anything in the past three days either, so he couldn't have been drugged with anything, so maybe it _was_ just Adderall withdrawal or something, and the junkie reference was more spot on then he'd thought.

Granted, he had been popping back a bit more than the doctor's orders lately. Lack of sleep and life-n-death situations tended to warrant it.

"I'm not going to even ask how you know that, but yeah. There was an older kid in the next room, visiting his aunt or whatever, I can't remember, and he must've overheard dad talking to the doctor or whatever because he knew about it. He offered and I figured hey, if nothing else I'd get a few precious minutes of just not thinking. Except the three hours I spent vomiting afterward because Adderall should never be mixed with anything kinda put me off anything for ever."

Derek breathed out, chest lowering as the air expelled from his lungs, and turned analytic eyes over the small room they were enclosed in to give himself some time to think. It was a cabin, alright, most likely one of the bedrooms due to the single, old, mattress lying in a corner. The walls were made out of wood like most cabins you saw on TV usually were, and nothing else was worthy enough to even note. Everything was bare – no pictures on the mantelpiece on top of the fireplace, no paintings hanging on the walls – and the single door that led out to the other rooms was shut and most likely locked. After analyzing everything in sight, Derek glanced sideways at Stiles, frowning at at the pale face.

"You need to rest." Derek said, voice back to the deep timbre of intensity, words coming out more like an order than a suggestion. "I'll wake you if anything happens."

Stiles frowned, not liking the idea of leaving Derek to his own devices. Lord knew the alpha probably had enough silence in his own house whenever none of them were around, anyway. "We should both sleep," he compromised, knowing it was a futile effort to argue. Plus he felt tired anyway, and between the lack of Adderall in his system as well as food and the loss of blood, he really needed to get as much sleep as he could. Or medical attention. Preferably the latter. Derek looked like he was about to shoot the idea down, but Stiles sighed loudly, groaned in pain as his ribs suddenly made themselves known again – "hey! We're injured too!" – and tried getting rid of it by angling himself differently. "Dude, theirs no need to keep watch," he yawned, new position forcing him to lean more on Derek than before. "They're not going to do anything until at least noon, so we can sleep for a few more hours. Even if they come before then, they'll wake us up." Probably violently, but whatever.

Scowling, Derek nevertheless shifted until Stiles was pressed up against his chest more comfortable, his head anchored in the hollow where Derek's shoulder and neck met. Tension leaving his body, Stiles sighed, allowing himself to finally relax, surprising himself by breathing in as deep as he could when his nose brushed against Derek's warm skin. He could feel the rise and fall of Derek's chest, even the echo of the alpha's heart beating rhythmically, and all of it was more soothing than Stiles would have first thought.

"Sleep." Derek ordered, and Stiles could feel the word rumble through Derek's chest.

"Only if you do too."

A pause. Then, "Fine."

* * *

When Stiles blinked his eyes open again, waking from a truly satisfying sleep, it was to his face meshed in Derek's neck and the older man's scent filling his lungs with every inhale. It was also to an unsettling feeling of disorientation, lack of understanding, and confusion clouding his usually quick to get going brain, and Stiles knew his body should've jerked in shock or something when Derek suddenly spoke.

"You slept for about eleven hours."

He was still exhausted, a world weary tiredness aching from his bones and the hollow part in his chest where it felt like every emotion came from, and his mind felt foggy, hazy, like he himself was under water while his brain and higher thought process was above sea level, far away from his grasp. "Wha' time issit?" He yawned, ending it with a mutter of random English syllables that barely even made sense to him. His lips moved against Derek's neck, and it must have been uncomfortable for the werewolf, having someone so close to the vulnerability there, but Derek didn't push him off.

"Four in the afternoon."

"Pro'lly waiting for sunset," Stiles mumbled, sleepily. "Moon."

A ridiculously hot hand was suddenly on his neck, curled around it, the thumb rubbing small circles where his pulse spiked a little at the touch. "You're burning up." Derek noted, voice without infliction. Stiles didn't know if he was or not, he just felt very warm and limp right now, along with exhausted. Really, _really_ , exhausted. "Did they feed you anything?"

He frowned against Derek's skin, pretty sure he'd already mentioned being hungry and not having eaten in the past three days. "No. Hungry." To demonstrate just how famished he was, he took a piece of flesh of Derek's neck in between his teeth and bit down gently.

A rough hitch of breath came from above him, followed by an exhalation soon. The hand that had been on Stiles' neck moved down across his shoulder and stroked his arm, rubbing some warmth into it. Stiles was still shirtless, clad in nothing but his dirty and ripped jeans, and his hoodie was long gone, so he appreciated the effort, even if he didn't feel cold. But then Derek's hand paused at his elbow, grabbed it roughly, and with the tips of his fingers pressing deeply into his skin, moved it to expose the inner part of it.

"Stiles." Derek said, voice suddenly strained and serious. "Stiles, what is this?"

"Cubital fossa," Stiles mumbled dryly, too exhausted to keep his eyes open. "The roof of which is formed of skin, superficial fascia, and then the deep fascia." All hail wikipedia.

Derek was suddenly moving, shuffling Stiles out of his comfortable position, and he groaned as his leg was jostled, pain spiking through his system and clearing his head just enough to help him focus on whatever it was Derek was doing. Derek shushed him, more comforting than an actual shush to make him shut the hell up. Stiles finally blinked his eyes open to see himself sitting in between Derek's spread legs, his naked back pressed warmly to Derek's shirt clad chest. Derek still had Stiles' left elbow in his hand, and squeezed for a second until Stiles dutifully looked down at the inside of his own elbow to see what all the fuss was about.

Puncture marks.

About three of them.

Stiles frowned, poking the skin and staring at the small marks, trying to remember where they could have come from. He hadn't had them on Friday, that was for sure, but they didn't look like something that could have happened while he'd grappled with the alphas too.

Derek's chest rose as he breathed in, and instinctively, Stiles imitated the gesture.

"You're exhausted," Derek said, breathing the words in Stiles' ear. "But you still kept jerking awake when you were asleep. You're disorientated, quick to anger, and smell like sadness."

Conclusion: something was wrong. He'd most likely been drugged. Probably while he'd been unconscious after each attempt. And Stiles wasn't even going to touch on that sadness comment.

"What attempt?" Derek asked, and Stiles must have spoken out loud without realizing it. Or maybe Derek could just smell his _thoughts_ now too.

Head feeling too heavy, Stiles let it rest on Derek's shoulder. "Took me a while to get far enough in the hallway to get a signal. Maybe four times? Five? Can't remember."

Derek's breathing was too controlled, but for the first time since meeting the other, Stiles could feel Derek's heart beating double time – something even the werewolf couldn't control. "Stiles," came his name in a strained voice again. "What are you talking about?"

The strain behind his voice meant he had enough inkling of what Stiles was talking about, but just like always, Derek needed it to be verbally stated as bluntly as possible for it to be real. Sighing, Stiles let his mouth run off and do the explaining, because his brain really wasn't on board on remembering any of that yet. "I was in this warehouse with loads of meat fridges, freezers, whatever, and they left me in the one at the very end of the hallway. There's no signal there, but I figured if I moved and searched for one, I could maybe find even a single bar to get a call out or something. The only way to leave the fridge I was in was through the hallway – which was ridiculously long, like, seriously, who needs a hallway that long? – and it was narrow, and every time I even got close to the halfway point they'd jump me and I'd black out and wake up again back in the fridge. Then I'd try again, get a little further, black out, start back at the beginning again. I must have tried six times before I got a call through to you. I put you on speed dial one for easy access too, because I knew if you picked up you'd get it the quickest and know what to do. You wouldn't hang up on me like Scott did that time in the pool."

A strangled noise sounded in his ear, and Derek's arm, wrapped around Stiles' waist, tightened minutely. "They kept attacking you?" Derek asked, sounding sick and disbelieving. "T-They made you scream. You screamed. On the phone."

Oh, they'd heard that. Stiles hoped his dad hadn't. Why was he always causing trouble for his dad, anyway?

He made a little noise of his own, because noises weren't classified for werewolves only, and because he didn't know what else to say. What do you reply with anyway, when someone says something like that? 'Oh yeah, dude, I hope I didn't sound too much like a little girl'?

"You found me anyway." He said instead, nodding his head once in a decisive move before letting it fall back to Derek's shoulder. Positivity was definitely the way to go, here. "'Cuz you're the alpha, and they're in your territory."

Derek's lips rested on the spot underneath his earlobe, hot breath fanning out as he corrected, "Because you're Stiles, and they underestimated you."

That was a nice thought, but not true. "'Cuz you're the alpha," he repeated himself again, adding finality to his voice, even if he did contradict it by following it through with a hesitant, "and I'm pack?"

A growl was pressed against his skin, the vibration skittering over the spot and making Stiles instinctively swallow the sudden lump in his throat. "Yes." Derek said, sounding nothing like Stiles had, completely safe in his conviction. " _Yes._ "

Stiles would never admit it, but that was exactly what he needed to hear.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THANK YOU GUYS SO MUCH FOR YOUR AMAZING COMMENTS & KUDOS!!!!11! I CANNOT HANDLE THE FEELS!
> 
> In other news, this would've been more but I couldn't edit fast enough (I am, woefully, on my own here, SYMPATHISE, EVERYONE) and I need to study for midterms. I HAVE ANATOMY NEXT. Also, shortening Phagocytes to PHAGS and studying OUT LOUD will apparently get you dirty looks from the people sitting in HEARING DISTANCE of you, specifically the Canadian girl & American guy. Just fair warning, guys. <3
> 
> P.S. Next chapter's the last one, everyone!

The only window in the room showed a rapidly darkening sky when the women kicked the door open.

She was the same one that had shot the wolfsbane vapor gun out of the van, the same one that had destroyed his phone under her heels, and the same one that had told him in no uncertain words that come Monday, he was dead.

Stiles scrambled away from the window, moving towards the safety that was Derek who pulled him close, crouching in front of him and growling at the woman threateningly. The woman snarled back, face twisted into an ugly expression. To his surprise, Derek _laughed_ in the woman's face, baring his fangs in a frightening parody of a grin, and the woman closed her eyes and took a pointed step back, forcing herself to keep calm and not lose control.

"They're dead by now," Derek taunted, keeping one hand on Stiles, applying enough pressure that Stiles got the hint and edged further into the space behind Derek. "My beta alone probably ripped one apart, enjoying herself while she let loose for once. And the hunters wouldn't rest until the other was riddled with wolfsbane bullets."

Herself? Erica? Derek had let Erica take an alpha on by herself? And what was this about hunters? Hell, since when did Derek do _talking_ , anyway?

The woman – he really needed a name for her, Stiletto maybe? – made a low whining noise, a pathetic sound that hurt the core inside Stiles' chest. She opened her eyes, irises bright red as she glared at Derek with something bordering on pained grief. "We underestimated you and your pack, Hale." She said, and this was the first time Stiles had heard her speak, surprise slapping him across the face at the soft voice that came out of the ridiculously sexy body. He'd expected her to sound smoky, dark, seductive, but she sounded like a... like a... like a really nice person. Her red eyes left Derek's and locked on with Stiles, and her painted lips tugged down into a grimace, eyes hardening as she bared her teeth.

Stiles shrank back away from her, his heart suddenly lodged inside his throat. Derek snapped his teeth together, growling at her, both hands now angled backwards to touch Stiles, a silent command to calm down, that nothing was going to get him. How many times had Derek saved him, getting hurt himself just to give Stiles the chance to get out of dangers way? He could distinctly remember the hospital, when Peter Hale first turned out to be the alpha that had killed Laura, the one that had bitten Scott, and Derek had been the only thing keeping Stiles alive. He focused on it, on the fear he'd felt then, the way his heart had been struggling to break free from his chest, the way Derek had been thrown left, right and center and had even been reduced to crawling in the opposite direction to turn Peter's attention away from him.

His heart beat slowed, he dropped his eyes and stared at the back of Derek's head, studied the hair, the muscles of his back poorly hidden by the tight shirt, and felt his fear recede. Derek squeezed once before letting go, and Stiles fisted his hands in the black material in front of him, using the shirt to keep himself grounded.

"Why are you here?" Derek growled at the woman, getting straight to the point.

Stiletto dug her claws into the doorway beside her, letting off some steam to better control herself. A whole chunk of wood broke free, the remains splintered into sharp, jagged points. Stiles swallowed thickly. "We're here for you." She answered, her soft voice lending a whole sleuth of ominous meanings to the simple words. "Tonight, you're going to join our pack." She paused, made a show of looking at her wrist where a pretty gold watch was, and chuckled cruelly. "In fact, it's about time for the inauguration."

Derek growled, body tensing, muscles bunching beneath Stiles' hands. At first, Stiles figured it to be a simple wolfy reaction to Stiletto's words, Derek making it known he didn't approve. Derek kept growling though, his chest kept rumbling under Stiles' fingers, and his nails grew into claws. Something was wrong, Stiles could feel it in the sudden tension choking the room, he could feel it in the shift of Derek's body, the tell tale movement of Derek changing, and the fact he no longer felt safe.

Stiletto smiled.

And outside, the full moon broke free from clouds.

* * *

 

"Derek," Stiles wheezed, pain wracking his body as he was dragged. "Derek, what-"

A particularly vicious stick tried impaling him, and Stiles shut up in favor of moaning in pain. The claws wrapped around his left biceps tugged harder, dragging him further into the woods the cabin had been situated in, and it probably said something about Stiles' life that he seemed to be spending so much time surrounded by Mother Nature. Even worse, it seemed like she was suspiciously obsessed with killing him. Stiletto walked ahead of them, sure and confident in her gait, leading them further into the heart of the forest. Derek, or what was left of him, followed her obediently, dragging Stiles through the dirt behind him, uncaring of the teenager's injuries.

The moon – a silent observer, a silent instigator – led the way unbothered by clouds as the night stayed clear. A devastating howl pierced the air, scraping itself over Stiles' skin, setting his neurons on fire and sending panic down his throat. He knew there were four in the alpha pack, had seen them all in both forms, had heard them all growl and snarl, howl to each other, yelp when he'd gotten the upper hand on them. But this howl wasn't familiar, which could only mean it belonged to another werewolf, one Stiles hadn't seen yet. Derek wasn't acting himself – they'd done something to him, but what? And when? – and Stiles didn't have a snowballs chance of escaping.

If only the pack had a way of knowing where they were, if only they could get here before the alphas did whatever it was they were planning. Maybe they all had an in-built tracker that would lead them straight to Derek because they were his betas or something. Didn't Scott share Peter's psychotic, murdering, dreams? So why couldn't the pack mind-meld with Derek and come save both their asses? Stiles couldn't do this anymore, he was burnt out, out of ideas, running on dry, tapping into his last reserves and every other phrase he could think off. He was a human teenager who'd been in enemy territory for the past three days, who hadn't eaten a single morsel of magnificent, delicious, food, was aching for a drop of liquid, anything to moisten the desert in his mouth, and wanted nothing more than to boycott trees and anything made out of wood for the next _year_.

"S-stop, please," his mouth blurted out, voice cracking as he struggled weakly, leaving what little remained of his dignity behind on the forest floor. " Freakin' _hurts_ –"

A long howl drowned his words, probably for the best considering the pathetic noise that broke from his throat. Whoever the werewolf was, he wasn't trying to keep quiet, roaring into the night and making his location known. Maybe the pack wouldn't need some jedi trick to find them, maybe they'd just be able to follow the noise.

"Ooh, he's excited." Stiletto purred, claws flexing as she vibrated in her place, three paces ahead. "This is going to be _good_."

Stiles felt nauseated, he wanted to curl in on himself and close his eyes and pretend none of this was happening – he wanted his _mom_. He could feel the tears running down his face as Derek roughly pulled him along by his arms, could feel his heart dropping down below his stomach, further down and out of him, shattering and being swept away by the cold night breeze. They were slowing down, another howl rose unbidden in the air, closer, right next to Stiles' ears, and Derek suddenly let go. Stiles dropped fully to the ground, only dimly taking note of the clearing they were in, and instead focused on trying to grab a hold of himself.

"You came," Stiletto's voice was saying, dreamy and awed. "Elder."

Stiles couldn't hear the reply, heard nothing but a growl suddenly vibrating right above him, felt nothing but the displaced air of hot breath on his face, and saw nothing but black sky getting eclipsed by silver-gray fur of a werewolf. He knew this one, remembered ducking out of the way and listening to it howl in pain as Stiletto had chomped on him by accident. That had been two days ago, maybe? Three? The werewolf looked completely healed now anyway, but angry enough that it was obvious he still held a grudge. Stiles wasn't surprised – Peter had held a grudge for how many years? And Derek had shown capabilities of nursing hatred for even longer. It made some strange sense that werewolves held grudges. Because of course they'd make up for the lack of existence of vampires with increased prissiness.

Derek was sitting beside him, on his knees as if supplicating, head twisted up towards where Stiles figured the alpha was (elder? Maybe that was what they called the alpha-alpha of an alpha pack). The moon cast silvery light all over him, making the usually harsh edges of Derek's body language smooth and ethereal, the line of his neck an offer, a supplication, the rope of his shoulders gleaming and hiding behind dark shadows. Stiles couldn't breathe, his thoughts had come to a complete halt at the image the werewolf made, the expression on his face. Derek looked positively _reverent_ , staring without blinking at some location behind Stiles, at someone Stiles couldn't see, at the _elder_ Stiles couldn't see.

"Good..." A new voice said, the different voice pinging into Stiles' awareness. "You brought them both. Bring the human closer."

Stiles shuddered, the constant growl beneath the words sounding inhumane and primal to his human ears. Derek didn't twitch, not until the elder growled his name, repeated his order, but with an edit to directly address Derek, and Stiles gasped as the werewolf he'd harbored in his bedroom wrapped a hand around his throat and squeezed. His airway buckled beneath the pressure, trachea and esophagus uncomfortably being pushed together, and Stiles scrambled to follow the direction in which Derek pulled him in. He was shuffled further into the clearing, the dead leaves and twigs on the floor suddenly clearing into nothing but rough earth, a transition that caught his senses by surprise and threw him off course. The claws around his throat suddenly let go, dropping him unceremoniously, right at the feet of someone wearing thick, studded boots.

Once free, Stiles coughed and hacked, feeling like his stomach was trying to escape via his throat. A groan escaped him as he rolled onto his side, pulling his legs in so he could wrap an arm around them and curl into something smaller. Somebody made a disgusted noise above him – the elder. Who else could it be? – but thankfully he didn't lash out with a kick.

"This is the human that's been troubling you?" The elder spat, disbelief heavy in his voice. " _This_?"

"E-Elder," Stiletto gasped, stuttering as she spoke. "H-he's–"

"– _Quiet_!"

The forest went still, Stiles suddenly realized he couldn't hear _anything_ , not even an owl, and Stiletto whimpered quietly. The boots moved, and all of a sudden Stiles could see the elder crouch down and enter his line of vision, a middle aged man, dark hair and pale skin and the flash of fangs in a cruel grin throwing his body into another round of shivers. "I gotta say, kiddo, didn't expect to have so many casualties. You've caused me more trouble than expected. No worries..." Dark eyes pulsed red once and disappeared back into darkness, but the sharp grin stayed. "Derek, come here."

A shuffling came from behind him, the sound of Derek coming to stand beside them, and Stiles blinked blearily as the elder gestured for Derek to crouch down along with them. A moment passed, a heart beat, something small but _pointed_ enough to notice, and the elder frowned even as Derek finally obliged and crouched down next to him, bringing him down into Stiles view. He still looked blank, face relaxed in a way Stiles had never seen it before, and muscles loose and soft. The elder frowned sideways at Derek, eying him suspiciously for a moment – why? Why was the elder worried about whatever brain-control they had on Derek not holding? Was it not working properly? – but ultimately ignored it, looking down instead on Stiles.

"Did you give it to him?" The elder asked, words directed to Stiletto rather than Stiles.

Stiletto answered with an affirmative. "Three times; one for each day. Just like you said too."

A pleased rumble. "Good. Then we should get to it, I suppose. What time is it?"

Stiletto must have looked to a watch or a phone, because she didn't answer immediately. "Five minutes to eight, elder. But we should hurry, this town has hunters."

"All the better to raise it to the ground with," the man purred, and suddenly, there was another man crouched next to him, silver-gray hair and even lighter eyes, glaring intensely down at Stiles. Ah, the silver colored werewolf with the grudge. The elder stroked his alpha once on the arm, eyes still on Stiles. "The wolfbane's weak, he didn't get enough of it with that Sheriff. He'll have to bite this one and ingest enough of it for the transference to work."

Transference? Wolfsbane? Ingest? What the hell were they even talking about? What didn't Derek get enough of with dad? Maybe they'd drugged dad with whatever was in Stiles bloodstream, and Derek had had to bite dad to save him, so whatever it was was in _Derek._ Stiles opened his mouth, ready to demand to at least have something explained, because fine, he was going to die, he was accepting that, but he wanted to die at least understanding everything. And maybe he could stall long enough for the pack to at least save Derek, which seemed like a much better way to go anyway. "What the hell did you do to him?" He wheezed, throat still hurting from his recent abuse.

The elder grinned triumphantly, holding out a hand to stop gray-wolf lunging towards him with a snarl. " _Oh_ , you _are_ feisty," christ, Stiles thought desperately, why were the bad guys always as creepy as Peter. "Since you're going to be joining us, little one, I suppose I _can_ tell you." Gray-wolf's head whipped towards the elder, Stiletto made an animal noise of confusion, and Derek stayed completely still, wide, blank eyes staring at Stiles.

Wait... that was new... Derek was looking at him – at _him._ Stiles did a double take just to confirm, saw those blue-ish green eyes really on him, a flicker of awareness behind them, and forced himself to turn his attention back to the elder (which was a sucky name for an alpha pack alpha, it really was, so _unoriginal_ ).

"See, aconitum, or wolfsbane as you probably know it, can be used for so many different things, boy." The elder explained, falling into his role of monologue bad guys everywhere did as easily as breathing air. "I'm sure since you run with wolves I don't have to spell the most basic types out, but there's one specific combination of aconites, when pulled from the roots, that can..."

"What?" Stiles breathed, falling into the space the elder oh so obviously wanted him too. "Control werewolves?"

The elder nodded, looking deliciously pleased with himself. "It can poison humans too, which is why you've long since resigned yourself to death. Can't blame you that, since you dying _was_ to be the main event." _Was_. Past tense. Stiles felt his body tense up at the words, and he tried shuffling away from the four werewolves – Derek included – but was stopped as Stiletto put a heeled stiletto on his chest, stopping his progress. "Tonight, we lost two complete failures of werewolves. But tonight, we'll gain two more."

Gray-wolf hissed, "But we were only supposed to take _Hale_."

"And we are," the elder replied easily, dark eyes crinkling at the corners as he grinned. "But we'll turn this one and take him too. He was clever enough to cause all of you trouble. Imagine how much better he'll be when bitten. Give me the last dose, Constanza."

The stiletto left his body, moving away so Stiletto (Constanza? _Seriously?_ ) could give her superior a thin needle filled with a clear looking solution. Stiles breathing went rough, his heartbeat picked up, and his brain cleared up as adrenaline hit his streams, invoking nothing but a passing glance from Gray-Wolf. The elder's eyes pulsed red again, satisfaction curling his face. He made a gesture, and suddenly Gray-wolf and Stiletto were holding Stiles down, stretching him out and making him cry out in pain as his ribs loudly protested the abuse. The needle plunged into the skin of his arm, right alongside all the other puncture marks, and for the first time since being kidnapped, Stiles _felt_ the liquid rushing into his mainstream, forcing it's way in where usually only blood would travel. He struggled, trying to break free, heard the elder growl at his two alpha's to hold him still, felt the needle wobble in his skin dangerously before retreating.

"Give it a few seconds," the elder was saying almost lazily, glancing up at the moon. "It'll be soon now."

A cold breeze hit Stiles' clammy skin, freezing him to the core as the sound of trees ruffling screeched in his ears and made him wince. He blinked at the sky, could see Stiletto and Gray-Wolf's silhouette as they held him still, could see the moon looming behind them, so much brighter and closer than before, letting him see the dark share of Stiletto's lips and sneer on Gray-Wolf's face. Everything was suddenly louder – he could hear them _breathing_ , could hear their hearts _beating_ – everything was suddenly brighter, details sharper, and Stiles whimpered as his head exploded in sheer pain at the information overload. The elder was saying something, he could hear each and every word, screaming in his head, vibrating in his brain, but he couldn't make out the meaning. He felt like he was drowning, trying to hold on as the scratch of the earth beneath him became too much on his suddenly sensitive skin, trying to make sense and slow his brain down as it absorbed everything and numbed nothing, and didn't feel it when the two alpha's holding him shifted until they held his arms out, spreading him eagle on the floor, exposing his chest and neck and making him vulnerable.

"-happening, this is it. Derek, come here, that's right." _'Derek?'_ His fuzzy brain latched onto the name, onto the syllables, trying to use it as an anchor to hold himself above the rising water that was _confusion_. "Just a little more, kiddo. Look here, that's right. All you have to do is bite, Derek. Bite to change. Get your teeth in there and get in good."

A litany of _no's_ pulsed out in his head, pounding with the rhythm of his heart, trying to break out of the cavity it was imprisoned in and making his brain suffer along with it too. He tried tugging at his arms, but the action was futile, Stiletto yanking hard enough to keep him still that a whine broke free from his throat.

It sounded like Derek was saying something, his deep, gravelly voice repeating the same word over and over again, and Stiles tried to focus on it, because this was Derek, right? Maybe Derek was telling him something, something Stiles needed to know, needed to remember. Or maybe Stiles had something to tell Derek, maybe he had to get out all the no's in his head, to let Derek know he didn't want the bite, he didn't want it, not like this, definitely not like this, just like he hadn't wanted it with Peter like that.

"No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no-"

Who was saying that? He couldn't tell if it was him, if he was speaking out loud or just screaming it in his head, but no, that wasn't his voice, it sounded nothing like him, nothing like a teenager with a mouth that wouldn't stop moving. The tone was all wrong, the octave too low, the voice too rough like whiskey and vodka on the rocks. Derek? Was it Derek?

The elder snarled, ordering Derek to do it, to bite him, to take in more of the poison in Stiles veins so Derek could continue being his puppet, but Derek was still saying the one word, was still repeating it, and was his voice getting _stronger_?

 _'He's fighting against the control,'_ Stiles realized sluggishly, the knowledge dawning on him in spits and bursts. _'He's not going to-?'_

A howl broke his concentration. It wasn't the elder's, it wasn't any of the alphas', and it certainly wasn't any of the pack. But it was loud, predatory, _vicious_ , and it shot through the air like the crack of a gun and took all of them by surprise.

Then another rose into the air, followed by another, a third, a fourth, and before Stiles knew it, seven howls were ringing in the night sky, seven werewolves that weren't the ones here, and Stiletto and Gray-wolf suddenly looked afraid.

They should be; he hadn't recognized the first, but the others? Definitely the pack.

They'd found them.

Derek's voice suddenly went quiet, silence following in the wake of the pack's battle cry. Worried, Stiles forced his eyes downwards, seeing his own body as he craned his neck, seeing the horrible bruise right where his ribs hurt the most and the tacky pair of jeans barely holding on to his hips. Past his feet were Derek's knees, crouched as he was, and above was his face – calm, controlled, _his own_ – and blazing red eyes staring right back at Stiles.

" _No._ "

And all hell broke loose.

* * *

 

Arms wrapped around him, hoisting him up from his shoulder, and Stiles found his face stuffed in Derek's neck as the pack burst into the clearing at every angle, catching nothing but the image of a foreign large wolf with blue eyes flanked by familiar smaller ones with yellow. All he felt was pain at the sudden movement, blinking his eyes open as he realized he wasn't in the clearing anymore, instead sitting behind a tree away from sight as three SUV's roared into view too, the report of guns lighting up the night sky. His back was pressed flushed to Derek's chest, and he could feel the other gasping in air, could feel the tremors in his arms as they stayed wrapped around Stiles, and could feel the hot puffs of air hitting the back of his neck, so close to the vulnerable tendons there, so easy to bite.

A murmur came from behind him, from the panting Hale, a small sound of protest, the same word he'd said before. Stiles clumsily put a hand on one of the arms keeping him captive, keeping him safe, and ignored the sound of fighting behind them.

" _No._ " Derek hissed, murmuring it to himself again, maybe still fighting the hold of whatever drug they'd activated in him. Three days, the drug had three days to worm it's way into his system, three days since Derek bit the Sheriff. Three days since Stiles' had gotten caught. Three days to lie in wait until the elder had proverbially snapped his finger and activated it on the night of the full moon.

"It's 'kay," Stiles tried, slurring his words, adrenaline finally abandoning his system for good. Exhaustion crashed down onto him, not for the first time since this whole ordeal, and was quickly pulling him down into the cold embrace of unconsciousness. He said it one more time, clearer, without the slur, raising his voice just in case Derek couldn't hear, patted the forearms around him, and closed his eyes. The last thing he felt was Derek's arms squeezing him, pulling him closer, the warmth of the other man bleeding through to Stiles own cold body. And Stiles finally passed out.

* * *

 

" _Stiles?! Stiles! Come on, son, you'll be fine."_

" _Clean up's done. Next time, try to call us_ before _someone gets kidnapped? Allison, come here, we're going home."_

" _Is he... Is he okay?"_

" _He'll be fine, Scott. Let's go."_

" _Shhh, stay awake, Stiles. Stay awake. Just a little longer 'till the hospital, son. You're okay. Everything's okay."_

" _If you don't stay awake, I'll rip your throat out."_

* * *

 

The bedroom was dark when Derek peered in through the open window, shadows cloaking the room except for the alarm clock brightly displaying three thirty six on a Monday morning. The moon had disappeared a few hours ago, around the time it'd taken for Scott's mother to commit a felony or two to take care of Stiles. He could hear Stiles' breathing, quick and rapid and nothing like somebody who should be asleep.

Silently, Derek climbed over the window, coming to a stuttering halt when he heard Stiles' breath hitch. The scent in the air was potent, fear and worry rolling into and around each other until all Derek could smell was something dizzyingly close to grief. Realisation came to him that maybe he shouldn't be padding into Stiles' room on silent feet. He should probably make some noise, make his presence known, so that Stiles wouldn't have to fear who could be entering through his window.

So Derek coughed.

Loudly.

In retrospect, it probably wasn't a wise idea to do that either; especially with the way Stiles' beating heart suddenly stopped and started back up again, thumping loudly in the otherwise silent room. Derek could see the whites of Stiles' eyes, his heaving chest, the tense line of his shoulders. He could smell the fear and apprehension and exhaustion tainting the usual restlessness that exuded from him, and all of it just felt _wrong_. It'd been a good thing that he'd decided to come rather than tucking his tail between his legs and hiding back home. He _needed_ to know that Stiles was okay, that the boy wasn't too badly traumatised, and now he could see for himself that Stiles _wasn't_ okay, that he _was_ traumatised, and it was all Derek's fault.

A hesitant, "Derek?" came his way, and before Derek could answer in the affirmative, Stiles just bulldozed on in his usual manner, "Of course it's you, only you come through the window with no regard for privacy or _dignity_ , because it's bad enough that I'm weak and human and can do nothing but screw everything up, but you can't even let me just lie here hyperventilating by myself in the dark. People need to express self-loathing in a healthy way, and mine is in the thick of night in the relative privacy of my bedroom with no one around to be an audience."

Sighing, Derek crossed the room and impolitely shoved at Stiles to move over. Ignoring the squawk of indignation, Derek climbed into the freed space, staying on top of the blankets rather than under, and ignored Stiles gaping at him and making abortive noises that sounded more like a drowning cat than any form of speech. "Shut up," Derek ordered, nipping the overflow of Stiles' words in the bud. "Or I'll–"

"–Rip my throat out with your teeth, Yeah, I know."

Silence descended on both of them for a while, with Derek lying tense beside an equally apprehensive Stiles, and then, obviously incapable of being quiet, Stiles said, "What are you doing?"

"Stiles," Derek sighed in reply, long since resigned to the teenager's motor mouth and equally not wanting to scratch the thin surface of his own reasons as to why he was here. "Go to sleep."

Stiles made a noise like he was about to carry on pestering Derek, and made to turn around to actually _look_ at him too. The idea of having those hazel-brown eyes on him didn't sound so good, so Derek grabbed the boy by the arms and manhandled him to his side, facing away from Derek, and kept him bodily still. Shocked, the teenager spluttered, trying to half heartedly break free, but after quickly realising that it was pointless, came to a stop.

Silence descended again.

* * *

 

Except Stiles was _panicking_.

Derek was behind him, Derek had his arms around him, Derek was _in bed with him_ , and oh shit no, now he was becoming conscious of Derek's body, the long line of heat bleeding through the blanket to Stiles' own body, from calf to head, and he could feel the muscles through the thick blanket (no, he wasn't going to get jealous of a blanket, _no!_ ) and Derek's hot puffs of air hitting the back of his head; and Jesus, he was _not_ going to get a hard on. No Sirree. He was _not_ going to get turned on because of this, because he didn't need this crap right now. He did not need to face this budding whatever-the-hell-it-was thing with Derek freakin' Hale, and he sure as hell didn't need to get rejected and found disgusting and whatever it was that happened to idiotic teenagers like Stiles. Maybe Mother Nature didn't actually _hate him_ but just couldn't let herself pass up all the silver plates of opportunities he _hand delivered_ to her. And to his horror, he could hear Derek inhaling deeply, and oh Christ no, he wasn't – he wasn't – he – "Stiles."

Crap. He _was_.

Stiles was going to be so dead it wouldn't even be funny and what should he do and how the hell is he going to – " _Stiles."_

And suddenly, Derek was on top of him.

Stiles gaped up at Derek, suddenly on his back, staring in the darkness, eyes already adjusted after hours of lying still hyperventilating and drowning on goddamn _air_ , and Derek was _on top_ of _him_. In bed. In _his_ bed.

Holy mother of–

"Calm. Down."

Derek had his hands on either side of Stiles' face, Derek was _cupping his face_ and keeping him anchored to _real life_ , or maybe this was fantasy and he'd fallen asleep when Derek had manhandled him and oh dear _lord_ he _so_ did not want to wake up from this wet dream to find real life Derek behind his back grimacing in disgust.

"This is normal." Derek said, voice confident and alpha-ish, forcing Stiles to believe him through sheer force of will. "You're too wired up to go to sleep after everything that's happened. It was only a few hours ago we were surrounded by the enemy."

Stiles stared at him, half incredulous and half _'oh-my-god-are-you-giving-me-an-out-for-rocking-a-boner?'_ and intelligently let out a, "Whuh?"

Which, when you thought about it, was pathetic and embarrassing and just the par for Stiles, actually. So, the usual.

Derek flashed his teeth down at him, the white pearls coming out in something not quite a grin or a snarl. Before Stiles knew what was going on, Derek had shuffled down Stiles' body, stopping only when he was straddling Stiles' knees, and the hands that had been cupping Stiles' face trailed down with the movement, stroking down the vulnerable skin of his throat, down his collarbone and past his pectorals, coming to a stop at his mid-section with his calloused hands right on either side of Stiles' bellybutton.

He could see Derek's nostrils flaring, inhaling in again, taking in whatever it was he must be smelling with his damn werewolf nose, and whatever he was taking in (Stiles' scent, Stiles' arousal, Stiles' _lust_ ), it made a strange noise break free from his throat. Stiles answered it by making the well versed noise of choked embarrassment, because he was a teenage boy and even worse he was _Stiles._ As if reassuring him, Derek patted his stomach, and when Stiles squeaked out the general noises of confusion (" _What even_ –"), Derek murmured a soft, "Don't worry, I'll help. That way, you'll calm down a bit and won't be so pumped up on adrenaline."

And then – and then – and then all of a sudden Derek had his _hands_ down Stiles' pyjamas, just like that, so rude and invasive and _were you raised by wolves?_ and his calloused fingers were wrapping around Stiles' goddamn cursed hard on, and Stiles' vision went black for what felt like an eternity before he came back to himself gasping. As if that wasn't bad enough, Derek just had to go to _town_ on Stiles, pulling and tugging and twisting and _fuuuuhhhh–_

"Shh," Derek rumbled, quieting Stiles' noises of frustrated confusion. "Just let me, okay?"

There was something weird about Derek's voice – too close, too close – and Stiles realised belatedly that it was because Derek had stuffed his face in Stiles' neck. He had a werewolf attacking his neck, and it should have scared him, should have scared the crap out of him because Derek was an alpha, Derek was a werewolf, and his fangs and claws were right next to Stiles' all too human skin. Derek was just like the other alphas, the ones that had grabbed him and kept him for three days, but for some bizarre reason, he couldn't find it in himself to be afraid. Not of Derek. At least, not until he felt something wet drag across his neck and up his throat, and then only for a second before his higher brain functions promptly fizzled out and left him moaning, baring more of his throat to give Derek space.

And Derek just feasted on his neck while his hands soothed Stiles' burning body, moving the blanket aside to give himself easier access. A hand slipped under Stiles' shirt, hiking it upwards, careful of his wounds – oh so careful – as Derek nipped and licked at his neck, reducing Stiles to a moaning pile of human flesh. The alpha didn't waste any time just messing around, probably because he knew how being a teenager meant having seriously low stamina when it came to all things sexy, and Stiles gasped as the hand dipped back underneath his pyjama pants, under the waistband of his boxers to join the one already in there, and straight for his–

"Jesus- _fuck_ ," Stiles gasped, arching off the bed at the sudden onslaught of sensation.

Hot breath fanned out onto his neck, a deep groan reverberating, one not his own but rumbling from Derek's chest into Stiles' own. It cascaded into Stiles' breath hitching into another moan, breaking off into a guttural whine as Derek fisted his cock and slowly stroked, running a thumb over the slit to collect the already present beads of pre-come. The pressure was exquisite, fingers wrapped tightly around him to create a hot circle that destroyed any and all higher thinking, reducing Stiles to being able to do nothing but just gasp and writhe under the werewolf's hands. One of Derek's hands slipped lower, trailed down the base of Stiles' cock to run lightly over his balls, tugging on them sharply, and holy fuck, Stiles was coming, Stiles was so done – so embarrassingly done like a freaking teenager who'd never had somebodies hands on him before, and he cried out as Derek ruthlessly stroked him through his orgasm, milking him until Stiles groaned at the over stimulation.

Derek nuzzled into the crook where Stiles' neck met his shoulder, inhaling in the cloying scent of _Stiles_ , the thick concentration of pheromones sluggishly filling his lungs and making him dizzy. "Can you sleep now?" He growled, unable to keep the wolf inside him from howling it's approval as he rubbed his nose into the space beneath Stiles' ear. A vague hum was his answer, satisfaction rolling in waves off the teenager's body, enough that Derek huffed out his amusement, pleased with himself for inducing Stiles into a purring mess of silence. "Then _sleep._ "

Stiles snuffled, an adorable little sound Derek hadn't expected to hear, and pawed at Derek's chest to get them both rolling onto their sides, pushing sleepily into Derek's space. Carefully, Derek adjusted himself subtly underneath his jeans, ridiculously glad that he'd promised the Sheriff to keep an eye on Stiles for the night, glad that the Sheriff would stay behind with the rest of the pack far, _far_ , away till dawn broke.

"You'll stay?" He heard Stiles mumble, voice low and drugged in the way only someone about to pass out could be.

Nodding, Derek hesitated only for a second before pressing his lips to the exhausted teenager's forehead. "Yeah, I'll stay."


	5. Chapter 5

It turned out, a week later, that Stiles heart hadn't yet realized it wasn't still in danger. He was hobbling around pretty well despite himself, an ankle brace around his thankfully-not-beyond-repair ankle and a cream to help the bruises all over his body heal quickly. But he was also being unnecessarily stubborn, refusing to let even a dewy eyed Lydia help him, always flinching or scurrying away whenever any of the werewolves were even in sight, and frankly, it was making everybody a little cranky. Derek watched silently as his pack settled comfortably into the Stilinski living room, the Sheriff – John – sprawling out onto the sofa and putting his feet up on an amiable Boyd's lap, Erica and Isaac sitting near them on the floor with Scott and Jackson while Peter leaned against a doorway.

John had his face covered with an arm, hiding from view as sadness radiated from him. He couldn't even go near Stiles without the teen getting wide eyed and panicky, something that made him feel as useless as when his wife had died.

Which was why there were all here. Because this had to stop.

"He's being bitchy," Erica frowned, glaring at the ceiling with a sneer. "And he keeps flinching whenever we're even _close_ to him."

Beside her, Isaac nodded, looking pained and sympathetic as he rested his head on Erica's lap. "He gets scared whenever we even growl, or do anything wolf-y."

Jackson grunted something as Scott squinted up at Derek from the floor with a hesitantly determined look. "You're the only one that knows what happened; he refuses to tell us anything."

Scoffing at the hint of hope he could hear in Scott's voice, Derek shook his head and kept his arms crossed over his chest. "I'm not telling you anything." He bluntly told them, directing it to everybody in the room rather than just Scott. It wasn't like he knew much anyway – beside the 'attempts' Stiles had told him about when he'd obviously been drugged up on wolfsbane. "It's getting late, so you all need to leave."

The teenagers half-heartedly tried to stay longer, most of them hearing the order even without Derek explicitly using his Alpha voice, but Scott – like always – ignored him and made himself comfortable, resting his back against the sofa near the Sheriff's head. "I'm not leaving him alone. None of us are. Right?" Isaac looked uncertain, unwilling to be put on the spot, and Erica – still riding the tail end of her period most likely – quickly allied herself with Scott, always raring to go.

Derek bared his teeth, letting his eyes flash red, and opened his mouth to repeat himself when the Sheriff surprised all of them with an irritated growl. Scott and the betas went tense, turning wide eyed towards the sheriff as John dismounted his legs from Boyd's lap, sat up, and glared at the teenagers. "Do you think Stiles would appreciate being in a house full of werewolves? I don't even want to think about how many times one of you lost control and almost killed him when you were just turned-" Scott looked down, guilt wafting off him in waves. "-but I refuse to let any of you force Derek to betray Stiles' trust. Now leave, all of you."

Shocked, the teenagers got up to their feet and trickled out of the room one by one, Erica dropping her eyes from Derek in a show of apology, one he accepted with a small nod. Scott barely looked at him as he passed. Nothing unusual there.

"I guess I'll leave too, then." Peter commented, looking bored of the conversation. "Do tell the boy I send my regards. Maybe we should get Argent to train him up as a hunter for us."

Growling at the idea of letting Stiles anywhere near the Argent household, Derek jerked his head towards the exit, and didn't stray his eyes from his uncle until he was certain Peter was long gone. The Sheriff watched Derek curiously, ignorant of the family drama that had resulted in Peter killing Laura, but sighed quietly instead when Derek turned to look at him. "I'm not happy," he said, answering the question Derek hadn't been able to actually ask. "I'm not happy that I can't know what happened to my son, that you won't tell me, but I get it. He never wants anybody to worry about him, I know. I'm just grateful that at least somebody here is thinking with a straight head. But you need to talk to him."

Derek nodded, moving forward to help the Sheriff stand to his feet, clasping the older man by the shoulders for a moment. "You've seen the other betas and their eyes. There's a reason why you have a different color."

"It's because I'm your Second, isn't it?" John replied wearily, nodding with a small quirk to his lips at Derek's surprised look. "Yeah, Peter told me. He also threatened to cut me in half if I ever so much as thought about betraying you. Though I think that was something he didn't want me to tell you."

Frowning, Derek shook his head. "Stay away from Peter," he warned, not willing to have the Sheriff get hurt for simply not knowing about the man's bid for power. "You're my Second, so if he tries anything, pull rank on him like you did just now."

"I will." John nodded, smiling tiredly as he patted Derek on the shoulder. "Now go upstairs and deal with my son. Try and be easy on him, yeah? Scott needs someone to knock some sense into him, I swear. I'll go and keep the kids busy." The Sheriff paused, looked thoughtful for a moment, and then said with a grin, "Or should I say pups?"

Derek snorted, starting to see where Stiles may have gotten his humor from, and followed John's movement as the man turned to leave the house. A few minutes later and John was out of ear shot, nothing in the house now except for the scent of pack (something he thought he'd never have again) and Stiles' rhythmic heartbeat coming from upstairs. The sky outside was dark, the clock lying precariously on top of the TV ticked over to ten, and Derek inhaled deeply before taking to the stairs. He made sure to stand on each creaking step, to announce his approaching presence as loudly as possible, and came to a stop in front of Stiles' door. Hesitating for just a second, Derek breathed out through his nose, closed his eyes for a moment – _blood, skin, wide brown eyes_ – and rasped against the door three times before pushing through anyway.

His eyes tracked around the room, seeing the desk with the laptop hibernating on top, the window shut tight with small vials of glass along the sill (alarm system?) and a lump bundled underneath the blanket on the bed. Derek moved forward, dropping onto the bed, forcing himself to ignore the small hitched breath and full body flinch Stiles gave. He sat there, using the silence to try and plan out how to start, how best to go about it and make the upcoming confrontation as easy for both of them as possible, but in the end, like always, Stiles spoke up with a cracked, "What?"

Still not sure _what_ to do, despite knowing he'd have to do it, Derek shook his head – a bid to stall for time – and didn't reply. Stiles buzzed head became visible as the teen shoved the blanket off him, glaring down at Derek with his honey brown eyes, and with a voice filled with much more confidence said, "What do you _want_ , Derek?"

"Nothing." Derek said quietly.

The smell of burned copper pervaded the room as Stiles snarled in anger, eyes flashing as he hissed, "Don't lie to me! Of course you want something!"

"No, Stiles, I don't." Derek responded, still quiet, struggling to keep himself visually non-threatening. " _We_ don't."

Just as fast as the smell came, it disappeared, and nothing but the small, constant amount of fear remained in the room as Stiles buried himself into the blankets and went quiet. Derek could never stomach the idea that Stiles was perpetually afraid, even before the alpha pack had come, but more than that, he couldn't understand how Stiles could still function even remotely like a human being with it. How did the boy do everything he did with the paralyzing feel of fear always with him? How the hell did he keep coming back – sarcasm increasing with every added ounce of fear?

Maybe this was the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back. Derek wouldn't hold it against Stiles if he decided this was it, that he couldn't do it anymore, couldn't be the boy that ran with wolves. But then again, Derek had taken away that choice hadn't he? With the Sheriff now a werewolf and Derek's Second, Stiles would never truly be able to just quit, not with the way Stiles took care of his dad.

"I'm sorry," Derek found himself saying, surprising himself by the words coming out of his mouth into the dead silence of the room. "Even if you got tired of us, you wouldn't be able to leave now that your father's my Second."

Stiles made a curious noise from beneath the blankets, the mass of it squirming with it before falling still. "He's second in command now?"

Derek nodded, dimly wondering why he even bothered to be surprised by curiosity being the only thing to bring Stiles out of his funk. "Yeah. He helped get rid of everybody just now. Plus he has blue eyes instead of Scott's yellow."

Once more, Stiles made a noise, but it was suddenly more devastated than curious. "I thought it was a hallucination," the boy moaned, heart rating picking up as the fear was spiked with panic. "You can't make him, no, you can't put him in danger, the _Argents_ -"

"-Stiles," Derek interrupted, worry spiking along with Stiles' increasing heart beat. "Stiles, _calm down._ He'll be fine, the Argent's don't know a thing. They didn't see him change, and they don't know the difference between us to tell. He's worried about _you_." Stiles shut up quick enough, and Derek felt the smoky stench of guilt. Realizing Stiles wasn't going to make this easy for him, Derek decided to take another page out of Stiles' book, and do the talking for the both of them this time. "You need to talk to someone, tell them everything," he began, ignoring the full body tensing happening underneath the blankets. "Let whatever it is you're thinking that has you so quiet come out, even if it's just to me. Stiles, you're hurting yourself, you're hurting everybody. Especially you're dad."

The small gasp that came from Stiles sounded heartbreaking, the guilt tripling enough to trigger Derek's memories of fire. He could hear Stiles draw in a raggedy breath, could hear the air wobble out of his lungs when he exhaled, and found himself at a lost as to how to carry on. He couldn't just stop speaking now, not when he'd brought Stiles to this peak, where the teenager was dangling and could go either side, could go into the abyss that would have him lost to everybody or back into the safety of the pack's arms.

But Derek had never been good with words, not even before the fire, not even before Kate and everything she'd done, and suddenly he found himself burning with envy and sheer want for his sister, for the way she could talk anybody into anything, how she'd mischievously drag Derek into trouble and leave him to take the blame, only to sneak him some sweets later on as apology. He found himself missing the way she'd talk him and her out of trouble, and whenever she couldn't, she'd pull a face and slither behind Derek, letting him deal with the action, and he missed the way she'd dragged him around New York, insisting on buying him clothes, and the way she'd forced him into leather in the first place, with some stupid line about how they'd match.

It hurt to think about her, it always did, even worse when he thought about the way she'd been killed, about how she must have coming face to face with Peter, their _uncle_ , only to die alone in their family forest.

So caught up in remembering her, Derek didn't notice the hand coming towards him until it dropped on top of his own fisted one, causing him to startle in surprise. Stiles flinched back at the motion, taking his hand with him with a start, but Derek grabbed it and held on, riding out Stiles' reaction and the waves of his panic before the teen got a hold of himself and calmed down. Stiles stared at him, pupils blown wide and almost swallowing the hazel brown, lips parted to show only the hint of a moist tongue, and Derek answered by squeezing the hand in his own.

"Y-You had that face on you again," stuttered Stiles, tripping over his words in his haste to get them out, trying to explain why he'd been touching Derek. He looked afraid, frightened, as if... as if... as if Derek would be angry. He must have made an expression, something to prompt Stiles all but shouting, "You looked like you were thinking about your family!" He must have done something else with his face at the exclamation because Stiles squeaked and dived back into his blankets, and Derek found himself unable to stop out the punch of laughter that burst out of him at the image.

For some reason, it reminded him of Laura doing something completely stupid and blaming it on whatever ridiculous object was near her – like a potted plant – and looking panicked when she realized just how stupid of a scapegoat it was. It reminded him of Uncle Peter (before everything, before _everything_ ) conning his dad out of his money, and dad complaining loudly to mom who'd get so pissed she'd ground them both like rebellious teenagers.

Stiles reminded him of his family, of all the stupid but clever ways Laura barely survived with, of all the deadpan snark his dad responded with, of his mother's fierce loyalty to her pack and family. And Stiles thought he was _angry_ , in typical Stiles fashion, yet for someone so wrong, he was the only one out of everybody to notice that Derek had a 'face' for when he remembered his family.

Stiles was staring out from his hidden spot, confusion written all over his face as he peered at Derek suspiciously, and Derek felt his lips curl into something that might genuinely be a smile. "I'm not angry, Stiles."

Frowning at him, Stiles pressed with a, "Because I'm human? Because I'm damaged? Because I'm _weak_?"

Shaking his head, Derek's smile slipped back into nothingness like water dripping off oil, the self-deprecating emphasis causing something to twist inside him and make him want to whine. "No, Stiles. Because you said nothing wrong. You're right – I was thinking about my family. Mostly Laura."

Stiles stared at him, still suspicious, with the somewhat astute amount of paranoia Derek had noticed the boy to hold at random times and always caught him off guard. Stiles always seemed so... not quite _naïve_ , but _positive_ , and to think he inherently had a bone in his body that was even slightly paranoid seemed equally surprising as well as familiar. "You're not going to tell me something important just to get me to tell you something back, are you?" Snorting, Derek raised a single eyebrow at the teen silently, which prompted Stiles to grumble to himself and concede that yeah, Derek wouldn't stoop so low as to emotional manipulation, not when Derek had the far worse amount of ammunition that would only put him at a disadvantage anyway. Sighing, Stiles averted his eyes and curled smaller underneath his blanket. "What do you want, Derek?" He said quietly, wearily.

Deciding he should be comfortable if he was going to be staying here longer, Derek scooted back on the bed until his back rested against the wall, comfortable in the room he'd been in more times than he could count, and looked Stiles in the eye. "Talk."

For a while, Stiles stayed silent, visibly searching for words and wondering where to start, and for a moment it seemed like he wouldn't even speak. It wouldn't matter ultimately, whether he spoke or not, as long as Stiles ended up growing comfortable again in at least Derek's presence – as the alpha, getting used to him would make getting used to the beta's easier, theoretically – and slept through the night without terrors waking him up. But Stiles surprised him by clearing his throat awkwardly and looking uncomfortable as he started to speak.

"Um, I don't even know how to start, but you want me to talk so... I'll... just talk, I guess. You know I can't come up with foolproof plans all the time on my own, right? I just can't do it, there's never enough time or enough information to do so, and something always goes wrong so early on and then snowballs into the freakin' apocalypse, and I can't do it, I can't predict it or even see it as a possibility, I'm just not that good. I'm not really anything, I try, as much as I can, and sometimes I might get something right, or I might just get it completely wrong, but I figured as long as I tried it'd be OK, it'd all end up fine."

Derek frowned, hearing a huge but there, and just as he'd thought, Stiles started up again with a, "But... it's even worse than I thought. I'm not really useful at all, I'm a liability, I always end up getting caught and making things worse. If it wasn't for me, Scott would've never been bitten, and right now I'd probably have been helping my dad figure out the animal attacks and what the hell was going on. I know I probably would've ended up stumbling across you anyway, and maybe even finding out, so you can stop frowning, but it's also the truth. And this whole crap didn't help anyway. At all."

Stiles kept talking, detailing everything that had happened from what he can remember, how he'd tried to run, the injury on his ankle now in a cast, waking up in the alleyway and getting lucky with a messed up text message before getting hit and passing out, and Derek kept listening. He was surprised at the pride he felt rising up in him at that, squeezing Stiles uninjured ankle through the blanket, quietly trying to send through the message that Stiles had done good by screwing the alpha over, better than his beta's probably would've done in such a situation (their instinct would've forced them to be docile in the presence of an alpha, even Scott would've struggled to stay independent). Stiles faltered, voice cracking and dropping, something vulnerable in his blown honey eyes before he started again quietly, talking about waking up in the meat fridge.

"And, uh, I guess you know what happened afterward." That wasn't talking. Derek shook his head, boring into Stiles with his eyes until the teenager huffed and scowled at him. "I tried getting out to find a signal and call you guys, and it took a while, but then I finally got it and you heard me and you came and found me." Stiles rushed in one go, summing up the three days he'd spent in captivity with a single sentence that lacked any kind of pause. The teen paused, looking surprised at his own words before he cocooned himself further into his nest, repeating himself quietly. "You... actually found me."

The growl came out of him before he could hold it back, and the wolf inside him whined as Stiles went stock still for a second in instinctive fear, too used to the growls of enemy werewolves to realize he wasn't in any danger. Carefully, Derek shuffled on the bed towards Stiles, keeping his face open and clear of any signs of his wolf as he could, holding his hands – palms first – out for Stiles to keep track off as he climbed into the space between Stiles and the wall, letting Stiles be on the outside so he wouldn't feel cornered. He knew a little something about fear, about what it could do to you, what it could make you see or feel, so he only laid down beside Stiles and made contact as he finally spoke up, infusing as much confidence as he could, which wasn't surprisingly too hard. "I can't promise you won't get hurt, not if you keep hanging around us and especially me. But I can promise you, Stiles, that no matter what happens or how far you end up being, no matter how unlikely it may see, we'll – _I'll –_ always find you."

And apparently, Derek had just pushed Stiles over the precipice.

"But you can't," Stiles wheezed, squeezing his eyes together tightly as his expression cracked, opening them up again to show nothing but pain and grief. "Not all the time. Life doesn't work that way."

Derek held back the growl building in his throat, let it rumble in his chest rather than come out, and brought a hand up towards Stiles' face, hovering as the teen flinched before softly putting it on his cheek, soothing the stench of smoke dripping of him as he stroked the soft, pale, skin. "Every time, Stiles." He promised darkly. "And I'll rip apart anyone that touches you."

Stiles broke the eye contact, averting his gaze away from him, but nodded slightly as he burrowed in further towards Derek's warmth. He was shivering, running cold, a physical reaction to his own thoughts, possibly, and it only made sense that Stiles would seek out Derek's heat – he naturally ran hotter than the average human thanks to his lycanthropy. By the time Stiles stopped moving, he had his face hidden in the hollow of Derek's neck – a vulnerable position, one that normally Derek would've been completely against, but found himself strangely satisfied with it – Derek's hand lying on top of Stiles' hip on top of the blanket, just a slight pressure of reassurance, to show Stiles he was here.

His lungs deflated as he let it burst out of him in a sigh, his stiff muscles finally relaxing into the comfortable bed and the warm body beside him, and Derek couldn't stop himself from pressing dry lips to Stiles'' short hair. He could feel Stiles breathing in and out, expelling hot air through his nose into the sensitive skin of where his collarbones met his sternum, could smell the smoke receding, the rotten eggs disappearing, leaving nothing but the smell of grounded coriander in it's remains. He didn't expect anything to come of it, packs were generally touchy anyway, and he'd held back from the humans in the pack because he'd figured they wouldn't understand. He'd held back from Allison and Lydia because they belonged to Scott and Jackson first and foremost, and he didn't have either of their trusts to even bother risking a feud like that, and he'd held back from Stiles because he couldn't see a way of how that could have been taken positively. But now everything had changed, the awkward barrier between them had been broken when they'd been stranded together at the mercy of the alphas, and Derek wasn't about to let Stiles get away without at least smelling slightly of Derek.

It was peaceful, just as peaceful as it'd been in the cabin waiting for the enemy to make their move.

And then Stiles was muttering, "Oh shit," right before a punch-drunk wave of arousal hit Derek solely in the solar plexus.

He couldn't help it, couldn't help inhaling deeply through his nose, nostrils flaring as the spicy tang flooded his lungs and set his own skin alight. His mouth watered at the scent of herbs mixing with the pulsing increase of coriander mixing with hormones and lust, and the inquisitive noise that broke free from his throat without his permission was all wolf – and the noise of choked embarrassment that came from Stiles was definitely all teenage boy.

Derek snorted despite himself, wryly thinking of how horrible it must be to be a teenager popping inappropriate boners when they really weren't necessary, but he couldn't fault the teen for his body. Teenage boy plus hormones always made things awkward, and Stiles had long since been crowed the king of awkward, and Derek hadn't exactly discouraged his body with the last time they'd been in a bed together.

What he didn't expect was for Stiles to start struggling, fighting to get out of Derek's loose hold, and surprised by the sudden movement, Derek held on, keeping Stiles still as to not aggravate the teen's broken rib or the other numerous injuries still littering around his body.

"I'm sorry!" Stiles squeaked, sounding panicked as he glanced at Derek with wide hazel-brown eyes. "I didn't- it was never- I was never going to say anything!"

Derek growled, trying to tell the kid to stop moving, but Stiles just went still as death at the sound, his heart rate picking up and sky rocketing, his breathing going ragged as his eyes lost focus and became glazed. Cursing, Derek let the pressure up on his hold and shuffled down until his face was in line with Stiles, stroking the teenager's cheek carefully, tapping at it to grab the other male's attention, "Stiles," he started, keeping sure not to hiss or sound threatening. "Stiles, calm down. Stiles." But Stiles was out of control, babbling something, speaking a mile a minute with Derek's name scattered in between.

"-orry, I'm so sorry, Derek, I didn't mean to- I don't know when it happened or how or why, it's just you saved my dad and saved me a buncha times and you're not bad at all just have a sucky amount of luck and I hate that I never had a chance of knowing you while you were happy and-" A deep breath, Derek opened his mouth to try and take advantage of the opportunity, but Stiles didn't even exhale as he burst into speech again. "-when your whole family were around and Laura was alive and just thinking about it makes my chest hurt because you didn't deserve that and no-one deserves it and I know there's no chance and my stupid body should know that but it doesn't and I'm so sorry please don't hate me, I- I can't help it–"

"–For God's sake, Stiles," Derek interrupted, speaking loudly to try and drown out the words as he slotted a hand over Stiles' mouth to shut him down. "Calm down, breathe through your nose, yeah, just like that." Hell, who could even _speak_ that fast with only one breath? Was Stiles even _human_? And the things he'd said, they'd just thrown Derek completely off his game. Was he reading too much into it? Stiles was still riding on the tail end of terror, so whether or not he meant any of what he'd said could be taken with a grain of salt. But what if he did? What would, _could_ , Derek do about it? "Stiles, I need you to nod your head or shake it to answer. And I'll know if you're lying, so don't." Stiles nodded his head to show he understand, eyes wide and panicked, and Derek took a deep breath to fortify himself before point blank asking, "Do you like me?"

The hazel brown eyes turned wide and deer like, and Derek could clearly read the indecision over whether to lie or not battling it out in the kid's head. In the end though, Stiles squeezed his eyes shut, braced himself, and nodded his head once. Derek heard Stiles heart stutter before picking up again, a sure sign that he was pushing it, that this wasn't the time for something like this – but he couldn't just... ignore it. Even he knew that would end badly. He needed to think about this, think about whatever it was that was going on between them – whatever it was he'd forced himself not to think too deeply on but had happened anyway – and he needed to come up with an answer or at least a reply.

So what was it? He... couldn't keep his hands off the teen, that much he knew, even before they'd been on the same side. He'd resorted to violence then, slamming Stiles up against walls and lockers, and when camaraderie had been established, he'd resorted to just keeping his distance altogether. Scott always infuriated him, less on the fact he refused to admit he was pack already and more on the fact he couldn't get his head out of Allison's ass. The thought of how much Stiles had helped him had his wolf growling, the idea that even after everything Stiles had done to teach Scott better than Derek ever could, Scott still didn't listen to his supposed best friend.

Then there was the pool, a crystal clear memory that had always confused Derek, of being held up for two hours, dropped to the bottom of the pool because Stiles _had_ too, but never left behind. And he thought about the day Stiles had gone missing, how frantic all of them had been to search for him, how they'd all been barely holding on by the seams, how even Peter seemed suspiciously fond of the teenager now – respectful too. Something about irked him about the exchange between Stiles and Peter, made him think he was missing something, that there was something there that had happened between the two that he didn't know about. Considering Derek still didn't know what it was, it had probably happened with only Stiles and Peter as witnesses, and Stiles still hadn't told anybody about getting kidnapped by Gerard, even if Erica and Boyd had told him after they'd broken free.

Derek rubbed his thumb against Stiles' cheek in small circles, staring at the apprehensive honey-brown eyes that skittishly watched him back, and smiled slowly at Stiles' confirmation to his attraction. "Good." He simply answered, bumping his nose against Stiles' just to see the teenager's affronted expression. "Good."

Stiles rolled his eyes, not looking impressed in the least. "I'm just going to pretend you said you like me back, because you said good, and the only person that finds someone liking them a good thing is when they like that person back – unless they're vain douchenozzles, in which case, dude, _rude_ – so hurray and everything, but I'm still kind of hormonally challenged and I'd really like it if you just prowled downstairs and gave me even a pretense of privacy so I could wallow in my own embarrassment."

Huffing in amusement, Derek peered down into the dark crevice between their bodies, the arousal in the air less pressing than it had been before. It was thrumming lightly, patient, no longer desperate for instant gratification but willing to defer to the emotional side of things for a time. "You really are just a teenager, aren't you?"

Stiles groaned, wishing for the ground to just swallow him whole even as he yawned widely. "Let me up, let me go to the bathroom, let me try and gouge myself in the eye with my toothbrush."

"Stay." Derek rumbled, closing in and letting their bodies fit together like perfect puzzle pieces. "No hurting yourself. It'll pass."

"Not if I just lie here with you and all your muscles behind me, oh my god."

"Then what?" Derek sighed in exasperation, rolling his eyes heavenwards. "I'll go downstairs if you want."

Stiles hummed in thought before saying, "What time is it, anyway?"

"Eleven." Derek answered. "PM."

The teenager rolled over him and off the bed, dropping with a wince on the floor. "Ow. Come on. Breakfast."

"It's eleven." Derek repeated himself, scowling down at the eagle spread teenager. " _PM_."

Stiles grinned up at him unrepentantly, subconsciously scratching at his stomach where his shirt had ridden up as he nodded. "Yup. Think of it as comfort food." He rolled onto his stomach, pushing up to his feet, and headed for the door, Derek following him with a put upon sigh. The teenager flicked on the lights as he went, heading straight for the kitchen with a painful looking yawn, and didn't stop until he reached the fridge and yanked it open. "I feel like ice cream. It screams comfort. And oblivion in the form of brain freeze, maybe."

"You're insane," Derek responded, scowling faintly as he watched Stiles search for a spoon and stick it inside the tub of chocolate ice cream. Stiles just grinned at him unrepentantly, scooping some of the dark delight and sticking it in his mouth, an obscene moan vibrating out of him. Wincing and trying to ignore the reaction going on down in his pants, Derek rubbed at his face, at the stubble covering his jaw, and glared at Stiles. "You're _insane_."

The spoon came out, empty of the ice cream, and a pink tongue darted out to drag along its silver surface. Stiles licked slowly, humming in satisfaction to himself, and nodded distractedly at Derek, scooping another spoonful of the ice cream and holding it out invitingly with a sly look. "You've leveled up from grunting to repeating your words! Congratulations, grumpy wolf. Now come here and taste some _buon cioccolato_."

And Derek, god help him (because that Italian accent was just horrible, Stiles, stop it), did just that.

* * *

 

"' _Think of it as preparation_ ,' he says," Stiles repeated, staring blankly at his dad. "' _Think of what might happen next time._ '"

"It's either this or teach you not to incite rage in the bad guys." His dad replied, perfectly happy with where he stood on the porch of the Hale house. "And sure, it might be a year or two early, but at least this way I won't have to home school you indefinitely for fear of losing you to the ridiculousness that spews out of that mouth, right?"

"You wouldn't."

His dad's eyes glowed an eerie blue before subsiding into the usual hazel-brown. "Aim, son." He answered instead, completely bypassing the look of horror dawning on Stiles' face as he walked down the steps towards him. "Aim and shoot. I thought I'd never say this, but remember what Rodriguez tried to teach you with his sniper when you were ten."

Frowning down at the gun in his hand, Stiles weighed it carefully and looked at where Allison was drawing a red circle on the bark of a tree. The rest of the pack (now including one Melissa McCall, who'd taken one look at the Hale house and frowned hard at Derek in silent judgment) were standing safely behind his dad. By safely, Stiles meant they were literally cowering behind his dad, peeking over his shoulders with wide, uncertain eyes. Heathens, the lot of them. Stiles would aim this gun at that tree and show just how awesome he was, and everybody would cower not out of fear, but awe.

Allison quickly finished up, moving aside to show an unconventional bulls-eye target of a smiley face, and grinned mischievously at him before winking and ducking out of the way. He appreciated her effort, because the smiley face had red eyes and fangs peeking out of it's mouth, and Stiles felt a lot more confident now that he knew he was shooting an evil werewolf tree rather than just an innocent tree with some weird circular drawings on it. He could do this, just remember every single piece of video game he'd ever played along with the stuff Deputy Rodriguez had tried teaching him one bizarre little summer nobody liked to talk about and he'd be fine.

Step one; hold the gun comfortably in his hands, widen his stance, and aim. Done. There was going to be some sort of rebound stuff when he shot, right? So he needed to make sure he was ready for it when he let a bullet loose and not accidentally shoot someone that could actually die – which, considering that the bullets were just regular bullets, could only be him, Ms. McCall or Allison. Lydia was off somewhere shopping, having taken it upon herself to replenish Stiles' ruined outfit from two weeks ago, and with her, an outfit meant a whole wardrobe, so she'd be gone for a while. Maybe he could shoot Peter. By accident. Wouldn't kill him, sure, but it would definitely hurt.

"Focus, Stiles." His dad sighed, not sounding surprised in the least that Stiles' thoughts had gone wondering. "Widen your legs just a little bit, like this." Two warm hands adjusted him, moving him just a little bit differently. "Now aim at the target, close one eye if you have too, and be careful of the recoil."

Right, so it was called recoil. Good to know he remembered the basic gist. Closing his right eye, Stiles peered through the left one and tried to align the gun to the center of the smiley treewolf. He breathed in deeply, breathed out again, and squeezed the trigger.

"Holy shit, that's loud!" Scott screeched, clasping his hands around his ears.

Stiles spun on his foot just in time to see most of the werewolves cower to the ground, his dad wincing but making no other move, and Derek slapping irritably at his ear as if some water had escaped into it. Rolling his eyes, he turned around to the tree to see if he'd succeeded, not really expecting anything – but lo and behold, one of the treewolf's alpha eyes was missing!

"Score!" Stiles shouted, throwing his hands up in the air. Another loud _bang!_ rang through the forest, and Stiles flinched just as he realized his mistake. "Oops. Uh." He could specifically remember Rodriguez happily warning him about keeping his finger _off_ the trigger unless he was about to shoot. Stiles had kept his finger _on_ the trigger. He'd kept it and he'd-

"Oh my god, _Stiles_." His dad groaned. "Finger off the trigger, son. Finger _off_ the trigger."

Huffing, Stiles pawed at the gun until he found the safety switch on and flicked it, then hesitantly tried shooting it at the tree again. The gun didn't fire off, meaning the safety was properly on, meaning the switch he'd flicked on really _was_ the safety, and hooray for trial and error! "I got it in the _eye_ , though." He said instead, gleefully shifting on his feet. "That werewolf would be _dead_ if it was real. And anyway, what happened to the elder dude?"

John took the gun back once Stiles offered it to him and started to speak when Jackson interrupted rudely with a, "Your dad's fucking _frightening_ , Stilinski," which was basically the _only thing_ he'd gotten out of all the betas when he'd asked. That, and a disturbing blush from Erica. Sitting separate from everyone on the porch, Peter rolled from his back to his front, cradling his face on his hands, and smiled dazzlingly as he answered. "A father's gotta do what a father's gotta do."

Which, from the shifty look dad was getting, meant John Stilinski had gone Alpha on an Alpha-Alpha's ass. And... won?

"But then, shouldn't you be an alpha?" Stiles blurted out, staring at his dad in confusion.

John shrugged, then said, "Chris pulled the trigger. Also, you and I are going to have a _long_ talk about keeping secrets from me. And... _other_ things." And was that a suspicious look towards Derek? Yes, yes it totally was. Holy shit, his dad _knew_. And Peter looked smug, and Boyd had a telling cocked eyebrow, and _abort, abort, abort_ -

-"So that's it, then?" Stiles said loudly, voice wavering at the badly chocked snort coming from Jackson. "The alpha pack is gone, Chris is BFF's with dad, Peter looks slightly less homicidal and Allison and Scott are back together again, _woohoo!_ Does that mean we don't have to fear for our lives for a while? Hopefully a week? Maybe two?"

"Don't jinx it," Isaac whined, hiding his head in his arms. "You're going to jinx it."

"Cool your fur, furboy." Stiles singsonged happily. "I have _plans_. Bad ass plans. _Life saving_ plans."

And that's when Scott blurted out, "Oh hey, has anyone heard from Deaton?"

* * *

 

> _FROM: dad (timestamp: 16:48)_  
>  _'Faeries kidnapped Scott.'_
> 
> _FROM: dad (timestamp: 16:48)_  
>  _'Faeries, Stiles.'_
> 
> _FROM: dad (timestamp: 16:50)_  
>  _'Derek gives up.'_
> 
> _FROM: dad (timestamp: 16:53)_  
>  _'Stiles.'_
> 
> _FROM: dad (timestamp: 16:53)_  
>  _'Get my gun.'_
> 
> _FROM: dad (timestamp: 16:54)_  
>  _'The good one. With the batman sticker.'_
> 
> _FROM: dad (timestamp: 16:55)_  
>  _'Hurry up.'_
> 
> _FROM: dad (timestamp: 16:56)_  
>  _'Love you. :)'_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's it! I honestly don't know what to say, besides the fact that this ate at my brain and the sheriff is an amazing human being and more were!sheriff should be around? Yes? Yes.
> 
> This probably isn't how you wanted it to go, or as fleshed out as you'd hope, but remember, 8K to 43? I'm lucky I didn't give up halfway and do a cop out with _magic_ or something. I'm also [sheriffbadass](http://sheriffbadass.tumblr.com) on tumblr in case you're a bro and want to be bros or something. You can never have enough bros, man. Bros are amazing.


End file.
